Ahmed K. Elmagarmid is the Qatar Foundation’s inaugural executive director of the Qatar Computing Research Institute. Before joining Qatar Foundation, he was director of both the Indiana Center for Database Systems and the Cyber Center at Purdue University’s Discovery Park and a professor of Computer Science at Purdue, where he taught and researched for 22 years. Early in his career, in 1988, he received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator award from President Ronald Reagan. The Ohio State University (1993) and the University of Dayton (1995) have both named him among their distinguished alumni. He is a fellow of the IEEE and an ACM distinguished scientist. His expertise is in database technology, data integration and quality.

Dr. Elmagarmid received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Dayton (1977), and his M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1985) in Computer Science from the Ohio State University. He has held positions at Pennsylvania State University, the University of Padova, and Purdue University.

Dr. Elmagarmid served as a chief scientist in HP’s Office of Strategy and Technology. He has consulted (among many others) for Telcordia Technology, Bellcore, IBM,CSC, Harris, D. H. Brown and Associates, MCC, Bell Northern Research, Molecular Design Labs, Sidra M&RC, and UniSql as well as acquiring a patent for workflow database technology.