Research
PhD at Concordia (FRQNT-funded) on the Nested Dirichlet Distribution for interpretable hierarchical models. Ten peer-reviewed papers in IEEE, Springer and ICONIP venues; reviewer for NeurIPS, AAAI and ICONIP.
AI Engineer · Solutions Architect · Researcher · Educator
Applied AI,researched, builtand taught.
Hi, I’m Fares Alkhawaja.
I work where three worlds meet: research that creates new models, engineering and architecture that put AI into production, and teaching that brings the next generation with me.
Across industry & academia
- Desjardins
- Valnet
- Concordia University
- Vanier College
- LaSalle College
- American University of Sharjah
- University of Sharjah
Who I am
Three roles, one practice.
Most people pick one lane. I work in three, and each one makes the others better. Research gives my engineering rigour and new methods; production keeps my research honest about what actually works at scale; teaching forces me to explain both clearly.
In practice, a model I formalize in a paper is one I can also architect on Azure, AWS or GCP, secure behind an API gateway, monitor in production, and teach in a lab the following week.
The path runs from IT and engineering support at Schlumberger, MetLife and the Ajman Government, through mechatronics and robotics research, to AI engineering and solution architecture at Desjardins and a computer-science classroom at Vanier College.
Production
AI engineering and solution architecture on Azure, AWS and GCP: agentic RAG and multi-agent systems, API gateways and secure AI environments, data pipelines, microservices, CI/CD, governance and IT operations.
Teaching
Ten institutions, from robotics workshops for kids to MLOps, Kubernetes and neural-network labs at Vanier and LaSalle, college mathematics, and AI training for professionals.
By the numbers
A life across three countries.
12+Years in tech
10Peer-reviewed papers
3Degrees, including a PhD
10Institutions taught at
3Countries lived & worked in
30Years young
4Years married
2Kids
Places I’ve called home
AEUnited Arab EmiratesStudies, teaching and research01
PTPortugalEngineering internship, Porto02
CACanadaPhD, industry and teaching, Montreal03
Work experience
Built in industry.
May 2026 – Present
AI Engineering Advisor
Desjardins
Montreal, QC, Canada
Details
- Multimodal experimentation through a dedicated APIM and API gateways for Gemini model integrations.
- Co-supervised the annual hackathon: Azure ML workspace, subnets, firewalls and VMs, controlled environments, and support for project owners and participants.
- Contributed to a client chatbot for the DGAG department, including quotation tools, on isolated microservices, Azure App Containers, Azure AI Foundry and GitHub Actions.
- Proof-of-concept benchmark of Elasticsearch against Azure AI Search: similarity scoring, retrieval quality, indexing performance, latency and cost.
- Enterprise work on data privacy, availability and security: data drift monitoring, private endpoints and controlled access patterns.
Apr 2026 – Jun 2026
Data Scientist
Valnet
Montreal, QC, Canada
Details
- Automated a nightly end-to-end Python pipeline ingesting revenue and engagement data from 10+ partners into BigQuery.
- Built Next.js and Plotly BI dashboards for real-time KPI monitoring, fully automating reporting from ingestion to visualization.
- Engineered a natural-language analytics chatbot on the Claude API and BigQuery that writes SQL and runs multi-step, evidence-backed analyses.
- Developed LLM analytics agents for trend detection, anomaly detection, summarization and revenue forecasting, plus an AI sales-assistant platform.
- Ran infrastructure across BigQuery, Firestore, Compute Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Scheduler and Secret Manager; designed multi-tenant access control for 15+ features.
Feb 2026 – Jul 2026
Head of Innovation & Technologies
CITA – Council of Innovation & Technologies Association
Canada
Details
- Led the innovation and technology portfolio: AI adoption, digital transformation and emerging-technology advocacy.
- Developed programs bridging research, industry and public policy in the Canadian AI ecosystem.
Jul 2025 – Mar 2026
Agentic AI Developer Associate
Localyser
Montreal, QC, Canada
Details
- Designed and deployed a modular multi-agent RAG framework with role-specialized agents and MCP-based tool routing.
- Architected agentic capabilities on AWS Bedrock, Lambda, OpenSearch/AOSS, RDS and Kendra.
- Improved knowledge retrieval, latency and response grounding; integrated chatbot components in React and NestJS with CI/CD.
Sep 2024 – May 2025
AI/ML Engineer Associate
Nectari
Montreal, QC, Canada
Details
- Engineered RAG conversational agents and Copilot extensions with Semantic Kernel, Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search in .NET.
- Designed a reinforcement-learning feedback loop to improve RAG-LLM response quality, with intelligent caching.
- Researched multimodal generative models and image augmentation for vision-language systems.
Sep 2022 – Jan 2024
Data Scientist Associate
Urbanoid, Inc.
Montreal, QC, Canada
Details
- Developed conversational agents and semantic similarity models for intent recognition.
- Deployed ML services as scalable REST APIs on Azure; synthetic data generation and a contextual recommender.
Apr 2017 – Aug 2017
Planning & Budget Estimation Engineer (Internship)
Ramos Ferreira Group
Porto, Portugal
Details
- Automated business-development processes with VBA tools; cost estimation and budgeting for large engineering projects.
Feb 2014 – Sep 2016
IT & Engineering Support
Schlumberger · MetLife · Ajman Government
UAE
Details
- Built internal VBA tools and interfaces for process efficiency; kept high-availability systems running and liaised between clients and internal teams.
Education
PhD, Information Systems Engineering4.20 / 4.30
Concordia University
Montreal, QC, Canada
- Thesis: Hierarchical Probabilistic Modeling with the Nested Dirichlet Distribution
- Supervisors: Dr. Nizar Bouguila, Dr. Manar Amayri · Funding: FRQNT Doctoral Scholarship
- Focus: explainable AI, Bayesian nonparametrics, hierarchical mixture models, feature selection, topic modeling
M.S., Mechatronics Engineering3.82 / 4.00
American University of Sharjah
Sharjah, UAE
- Thesis: Real-Time Path-Planning Using Depth/INS Sensor Fusion for Localization
- Supervisors: Dr. Lotfi Romdhane, Dr. Mohamad A. Jaradat · Funding: Graduate Assistantship Award
B.S., Electrical and Electronics Engineering3.90 / 4.00
University of Sharjah
Sharjah, UAE
- Senior design project: Smart Armband for Deaf People (haptic feedback + speech recognition)
- 50% Merit Scholarship · Best Logic Design award (2015)
Honors, awards & scholarships
FRQNT Doctoral Scholarship
Concordia University, QC, Canada
International Tuition Award of Excellence
Concordia University, QC, Canada
Graduate Assistantship Award
American University of Sharjah, UAE
50% Merit Scholarship
University of Sharjah, UAE
Best Logic Design
University of Sharjah, UAE
What drives me
Interpretable models for real problems.
My research centres on hierarchical probabilistic modelling with the Nested Dirichlet Distribution, extending into federated learning, sensor fusion and applied, agentic AI.
Interests
Hierarchical probabilistic modelsNested Dirichlet DistributionExplainable AIBayesian nonparametricsTopic modelingFeature selectionFederated learningDomain adaptationAgentic RAG systemsSensor fusionRobotics & state estimation
Research collaboration
Dr. Nizar BouguilaConcordia University
Dr. Manar AmayriConcordia University
Dr. Lotfi RomdhaneAmerican University of Sharjah
Dr. Mohamad A. JaradatAmerican University of Sharjah
Dr. Shayok MukhopadhyayAmerican University of Sharjah
Dr. Andrew DelongConcordia University
Research projects
Hierarchical Probabilistic Modeling with the Nested Dirichlet Distribution
PhD · Concordia University
- Introduced and formalized the Nested Dirichlet Distribution (NDD) within finite mixture models for flexible, interpretable hierarchical learning.
- Derived parameter estimation (MM, EM), model selection criteria and hierarchical topic and feature-selection extensions.
- Outperformed CNNs in low-data regimes across real-world and synthetic datasets; co-supervised student-led publications under submission.
Adaptive Weighted Federated Domain Adaptation for NILM
Concordia University
- Federated learning with domain adaptation for smart energy monitoring; IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems (2025).
Toxic Comments Classification using Machine Learning
Concordia University
- LSTM-RNN, Naive Bayes-SVM, logistic regression and random forest toxicity detection with class-imbalance optimization.
Real-Time Path-Planning via Depth/INS Sensor Fusion
M.Sc. · American University of Sharjah
- Indoor robot navigation with a Cascade Correlation Network fusing depth and IMU data; extended into a Robotica paper (2023).
Battery SOC Estimation under Dynamic Conditions
American University of Sharjah
- Kalman and Extended Kalman filters for EV battery state estimation; IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (2021).
Drone Tracking, Detection and Autonomous Landing
American University of Sharjah
- Vision-based drone navigation and landing with depth cameras and RRT* path planning for MBZIRC.
UAS-Based Battery Terminal Voltage Collapse Detection
American University of Sharjah
- Li-ion failure detection using Nussbaum functions on a PIC24 board; ISMA 2018.
Ongoing
- Student-led publications on hierarchical topic models and count-data clustering (under submission)
- Agentic RAG and analytics assistants built on cloud-native AI platforms
- Course labs and open teaching material for DevOps, MLOps and data science
Service & engagement
- Peer reviewer: ICONIP, the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and NeurIPS.
- Mentorship (2025 – present): university students in AI and computer-science research, including co-supervised publications under submission.
- Mentorship (2019): high-school teams for the FIRST Robotics Competition at the American University of Sharjah.
- Open source: research code published on GitHub for transparency and reproducibility.
- Knowledge mobilization: educational videos and online content that make AI and programming more accessible.
Peer-reviewed
Publications
Google Scholar profileSimultaneous Hierarchical Topic Selection and Initialization for Latent Nested Dirichlet Allocation
Applied Artificial Intelligence, 40(1): 2731990 · 2026
Adaptive Weighted Federated Domain Adaptation Methods for Nonintrusive Load Monitoring
IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems · 2025
A Simultaneous Hierarchical Count Data Clustering and Feature Selection Based on Multinomial Nested Dirichlet Mixture Using the Minorization-Maximization Framework
ICONIP, pp. 406–420 · 2024
A Hierarchical Count Data Clustering Based on Multinomial Nested Dirichlet Mixture Using the Minorization-Maximization Framework
37th International FLAIRS Conference · 2024
Simultaneous Count Data Feature Selection and Clustering Using Multinomial Nested Dirichlet Mixture
37th International FLAIRS Conference · 2024
Unsupervised Nested Dirichlet Finite Mixture Model for Clustering
Applied Intelligence (Springer), 53(21): 25232–25258 · 2023
Low-Cost Depth/IMU Intelligent Sensor Fusion for Indoor Robot Navigation
Robotica, 41(6): 1689–1717 · 2023
Alleviating Dynamic Model Uncertainty Effects for Improved Battery SOC Estimation of EVs in Highly Dynamic Environments
IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 70(7): 6554–6566 · 2021
Techniques of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS): A Survey
IEEE ASET · 2019
Experimental Verification of UAS-Based Battery Terminal Voltage Collapse Detection on a Simple Embedded Platform
ISMA 2018 · 2018
Knowledge transfer
Teaching
I love seeing students learn something new and grow with it. These are the places I have taught, from elementary robotics to graduate labs.
Vanier College
Computer Science Instructor ·
May 2026 – Present
Data mining, wrangling and visualization, data structures and algorithms; Docker, Compose and Swarm, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Helm, Prometheus, Grafana, MLflow and GCP.
Lacademie
AI Instructor ·
Feb 2026 – Jul 2026
Generative AI, LLMs, prompt engineering and applied data science for professional learners.
Concordia University
Teaching Assistant ·
Fall 2025
Labs, tutorials, evaluation and office hours at the Gina Cody School (CIISE).
Sommet College
Mathematics Instructor ·
Oct 2025 – Present
College and high-school mathematics with computational problem solving.
Animation KIDZ
Robotics & Coding Instructor ·
Aug 2025 – Dec 2025
Coding, robotics and AI literacy workshops for elementary students.
LaSalle College
Computer Science Instructor ·
Aug 2024 – Jul 2026
Neural networks, responsible AI, data structures, DevOps and full-stack engineering.
CDI College
Multidisciplinary Instructor ·
Jan 2022 – Oct 2024
Cybersecurity, AWS/Azure cloud, full-stack development; curriculum design, capstone mentoring and instructor orientation.
Ministry of Education
Creative Design & Innovation Teacher ·
Aug 2019 – Sep 2021
STEM capstones and competitions, including a mentored student with a disability who reached the Think Science 2021 finals.
American University of Sharjah
Teaching & Research Assistant ·
Sep 2017 – May 2019
Mechatronics and robotics labs; mentored FIRST Robotics (FRC) teams and took part in MBZIRC.
University of Sharjah
Peer Tutor ·
Sep 2016 – Jan 2017
Peer tutoring in engineering courses as a top-ranked undergraduate.
Teaching philosophy
Methodology
Every concept is introduced with intuition first, mathematics second and a working implementation third, so students can explain what they build. Labs mirror real engineering work: version control, containers, CI/CD, monitoring and code review, not only notebooks.
Assessment
Frequent, low-stakes practice with clear rubrics and timely feedback, combined with project-based evaluation. Students defend design choices, evaluate models honestly and document their work, in line with responsible-AI practice.
Student engagement
Multidisciplinary teams, live problem solving and industry case studies keep sessions active. Mentoring extends beyond class to competitions (FRC, MBZIRC, Think Science), capstones, internships and career preparation.
Curriculum design
Courses are built backwards from production-grade outcomes and updated against industry practice and emerging AI technologies, from data wrangling and neural networks to Docker, Kubernetes, MLflow and cloud platforms.
Toolbox
From theory to production.
AI & ML
Generative AI (LLMs, RAG, MAG)Agentic workflows (LangGraph, BotPress, LlamaIndex, ZenML)TransformersPrompt engineeringNLPComputer visionBayesian & ensemble methodsDiffusion modelsFederated learningTopic modeling (LDA)Time seriesHugging Face Spaces
Cloud & DevOps
Azure AI SearchAzure OpenAI (Semantic Kernel, function calling, MCP)AWS Bedrock agents & knowledge basesLambda, RDS, OpenSearch, KendraGCP / BigQueryMLOpsDockerKubernetesTerraformCI/CD, GitHub Actions
Data engineering
Vector databasesEmbedding pipelinesHybrid search (BM25 + vector)Chunking optimizationSQL, PostgreSQLREST APIsData modeling
Full-stack
PythonTypeScript / JavaScriptC++, C#, JavaReact, Angular, VueNestJS, FastAPI, Flask, .NETR, Rust, Swift, PHP, VBA
Robotics & embedded
ROS, SLAMArduino, Raspberry PiPIC16 / PIC24OptiTrack, Quanser, Pixhawk
Engineering & design
MATLAB, SimulinkPower systems, PLC, VLSICircuit & PCB designAdobe Creative Suite, CanvaAutodesk Inventor, Fusion 360
Projects
AI/ML2026
AI-powered Consolidated Dashboard
End-to-end dashboards that consolidate multi-source data through APIs and scraping, with actionable insights.
Valnet
AI/ML2026
LocaChat
Production multi-agent chatbot on AWS Bedrock, NestJS and React.
Localyser
Cloud2025
Copilot Extensions & RAG SK Chatbot
Azure OpenAI and Semantic Kernel Copilot actions in .NET.
Nectari
AI/ML2025
Image2PPT Equations
Extracts mathematical equations from images into presentation slides.
Entrepreneurship
Research2023
Hierarchical Clustering using NDD
Core PhD contribution: the Nested Dirichlet Distribution in mixture models.
Concordia CIISE
AI/ML2023
Semantic-Contextual Matching
NLP model for intent recognition and semantic similarity.
Urbanoid
Cloud2022
AI Conversational Agent
End-to-end conversational AI deployed through Azure REST APIs.
Urbanoid
Robotics2020
Vision-based Drone Navigation
Autonomous landing system for the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge.
MBZIRC
Robotics2019
DC Motor Controller & Battery Cooling
FOPID/PID control for thermoelectric battery cooling and motor speed.
AUS
Engineering2016 – 2017
VBA Automation Programs
Internal tools for process optimization and budget management.
Schlumberger & Ramos Ferreira
Engineering2016
Smart Armband for Deaf People
Sensor-based haptic feedback wearable with speech recognition.
University of Sharjah
Engineering2013 – 2015
Target-Following Robot · Digital Clock · Fire Alarm
Early awarded projects: IEEE CDP 2015, Best Logic Design 2014, Think Science 2013.
Work with me
Tutoring, training & consulting.
Mathematics tutoring
Algebra, calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics, with a computational problem-solving angle.
AI, ML & data science training
Generative AI, LLMs, RAG, neural networks, data wrangling and visualization through hands-on labs.
DevOps & cloud mentoring
Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, MLflow and cloud deployment on AWS, Azure and GCP.
Research & thesis guidance
Project scoping, modeling, experiments and paper writing in AI and machine learning.
Robotics & coding workshops
Project-based coding, robotics and AI literacy, including FIRST Robotics mentoring.
AI engineering consulting
Agentic RAG systems, retrieval benchmarking and cloud-native AI architecture.
Life in frames
Gallery
Contact
Let’s build something meaningful.
Questions about a course, tutoring, research collaboration or an AI project? Send a message and I will reply as soon as I can.