Rana Malhas

Dr. Rana Malhas is a computer scientist and researcher. She is also serving as the Senior Academic Program Review Specialist at the Academic Planning & Quality Assurance Office at Qatar University (QU). She is a former Lecturer in the  Computer Science and Engineering Department, College of Engineering at QU. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Qatar University, her M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Sharjah in UAE, and her B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Jordan. 

Before joining Qatar University in 2007, Dr. Rana gained extensive data-related, analytical, and technical experience through working in various institutions/NGOs. She served as a Senior Research Analyst at the Advisor Research Office of Qatar Foundation, the Projects Development Manager at the Arab Science & Technology Foundation in UAE, the Research Information Systems Manager at the Pan Arab Research Center in UAE,  the Statistics Manager at the Education Program in UNRWA Head Quarters– Jordan, and as the Technical Manager of the Socio-Economic Information Center at the Ministry of Planning in Jordan. 

Research Interests

• Data Science and Machine Learning.

• Information Retrieval.

• Arabic Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval, with a focus on Arabic Question Answering (especially on the Holy Qur'an and Hadith).

Research Activities

• Co-organized the IslamicEval 2025 Shared Task at ArabicNLP 2025 co-located with EMNLP 2025.

• Co-organized the Qur’an QA 2023 Shared Task at ArabicNLP 2023 co-located with EMNLP 2023.

• Co-organized the Qur’an QA 2022 Shared Task at OSACT 2022 Workshop, LREC 2022.

• Published in well-reputed journals.

• Served as a reviewer for well-reputed conferences and journals.

Memberships / Service

• Chair of the Academic Program Review Committee for Undergraduate Programs at QU (2025 – present).

• Chair of the Academic Program Review Task Force for Undergraduate Programs at QU (2021 – 2025).

• Member of the Curriculum Enhancement & Quality Assurance Committee, Computer Science & Engineering Department - QU  (2007 – 2014).

• Member of the Association of Computing Machinery (2010 – present).