News and Events

2026
We launched Agentic AI @ KFUPM, a university-wide community that brings together faculty, researchers, students, and practitioners to explore, build, and apply AI agents across disciplines.
2026
As part of KFUPM’s Ibn Battuta Global Scholarship Program, Dr. Alaa Khamis spent June and July 2026 as a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI), collaborating on a research project focused on adaptive traffic signal control.
2026
Our paper “Agentic Ontology-guided Image Generation and Evaluation for Rare-Event Data Augmentation in Safety-Critical Perception” has been accepted for publication in Array. The paper is available here.
2026
Dr. Alaa Khamis gave a seminar titled “Agentic AI: Connecting Perception, Reasoning, and Action in Smart Mobility and Logistics” at the KFUPM Business School. Slides are available here.
2025
Dr. Alaa Khamis has been appointed Founding Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) Saudi Arabia Chapter, leading the establishment and development of the Society’s activities within the Kingdom.
2025
Dr. Alaa Khamis gave a seminar titled “Agentic AI for Smart Mobility” as part of the ISE seminar series at KFUPM. Slides are available here.
2025
Dr. Alaa Khamis gave a seminar titled “Automotive AI: From Situational Awareness to Automation and Optimization” as part of the ICS/SWE seminar series at KFUPM. Slides are available here.
2025
Our papers “Agentic AI Systems: Architecture and Evaluation using a Frictionless Parking Scenario” and “Rethinking Vehicle Architecture Through Softwarization and Servitization” have been accepted for publication by IEEE Access.
2025

The AI for Smart Mobility Lab team won first place in the Sustainable Solutions for Pilgrims Challenge (Umrah Challenge), part of the Umrah and Ziyarah Forum (UZF) organized by the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah in Al-Madinah from April 14 to 16, 2025. The competition featured 153 participants from 21 countries across two tracks: ideas and startups. Our patent-pending solution enables natural interaction, personalized end-to-end planning, and over-the-air updatable service bundles for local and international Umrah performers.



2025
Our paper with Ahmed Elgazwy and Khalid Elgazzar titled “Predicting Pedestrian Crossing Intentions in Adverse Weather with Self-Attention Models” has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (T-ITS).
2025
Professor Hesham Rakha of Virginia Tech and Dr. Alaa Khamis are co-editing a special issue of Sustainability (Impact Factor 3.3, CiteScore 6.8) titled Smart Mobility for Sustainable Development.
2025
Two postdoctoral fellow positions are available to join the AI for Smart Mobility Lab at KFUPM. These positions focus on agentic AI for seamless integrated mobility and contextual observability of software-defined vehicles. Learn more on the Join page.
2024
The proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Smart Mobility (SM'24) are now available on IEEE Xplore.

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