Dr. Alfaris is currently an Assistant Professor at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the co-director of the Center for Complex Engineering Systems (CCES) at KACST and MIT as well as the Co-director of the Decision Support Center (DSC) of KACST and Boeing. Furthermore, he is the Director of the Joint Centers of Excellence Program (JCEP) at KACST that includes several joint centers with academia such as Stanford, UCLA, Cambridge and Oxford, as well as joint centers with industry such Intel, IBM, Boeing among others. In addition, he serves as a senior advisor to the Saudi Minister of Economy and Planning and is the chairman of the task force handling the strategy development for transforming Saudi Arabia into a knowledge based economy/society. Prior to that he worked for several years as a Research Scientist in the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) at MIT where he led several research projects and initiatives. At MIT, Dr. Alfaris taught several courses focusing on Multidisciplinary System Design Optimization (MSDO) as well as Computer Aided Design (CAD). Furthermore, Dr. Alfaris has been part of several multidisciplinary research teams including the Design Lab and the Smart Cities Group at the Media Lab, and the Strategic Engineering Group at the ESD.

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Dr. Alfaris’ research experience spans several fields including Strategic Engineering, Systems Architecture & Engineering, Generative Synthesis Systems, Integrated Modeling and Simulation, Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimization as well as Decision Support Systems. His current work focuses on the development of Integrated Simulations for the planning of large scale complex urban and Infrastructure systems. In addition, Dr. Alfaris has extensive professional experience in civil architecture, strategic planning as well as product design and development.



Dr. Alfaris received his training in several disciplines including civil architecture, engineering and computer science. He started his academic career by earning a bachelor degree in Architecture and Building Engineering from King Saud University. He then received a Master of Building Technology followed by a Master of Science in design studies with a focus on computational design systems, both from the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently received from MIT a Master of Science in Computation for Design and Optimization from the Center of Computational Engineering at the School of Engineering while completing his Ph.D. in Design Computation.