Awards

Grants

  • [PI: Dr. Zubair Shah. Dr. Hazrat Ali] NeoVision: Empowering AI for Neonatal Care in Qatar, Awarded by HBKU Innovation Office, 100,000 QAR (27,000 USD approx.) Grant awarded in February 2024.

  • [Lead PI: Dr. Zubair Shah, Co-PI: Dr. Hazrat Ali] Machine Learning Based Genomic Linkage Analysis for Identifying Key Biomarkers Associated with Type-2 Diabetes in Qatari Families, Qatar Biobank, Data transfer grant equivalent to 1,088,640 QAR (0.3 million USD approx.), Data transfer grant awarded by Qatar BioBank, in November 2023.

  • [Lead PI: Dr. Zubair Shah, Co-PI: Dr. Hazrat Ali] Machine Learning-based Models for early predicting Type 2 Diabetes in Qatar Population, Qatar Biobank, Data transfer grant equivalent to 19,053,000 QAR (5 million USD approx.), Data transfer grant by Qatar BioBank, awarded in September 2022.

  • [Principal Investigator: Dr. Hazrat Ali] Deep learning for Urdu hand written text, Awarded by Higher Education Commission Pakistan, Grant awarded worth 0.241 million PKR, Completed 2016-17.

  • [Member] Empowering Qatar’s Neonatal Care: Revolutionizing Early Detection of Developmental Complications with Foundation AI Models, Qatar Research, Development, and Innovation Council, 2.7 million QAR (0.73 million USD approx.) grant proposal (Not approved).

  • [Member] GlycoGuardianGPT: Harnessing Foundation AI and Longitudinal Biomedical Data for Precision Diabetes Care in Qatar – A Multimodal Approach to Predict, Stratify, and Manage T2DM, Qatar Research, Development, and Innovation Council, 2.4 million QAR (0.65 million USD approx.) grant proposal (Not approved).

  • [Proposal ] Deep phenotyping of carotid ultrasound images, Nordic Heart Foundation. (Not approved)

Awards and Recognitions

  • [HLF Alumnus participant] Selected as HLF Alumni participant and awarded travel grant for participant in the 2026 Heidelberg Laureate Forum, 12-17 September, 2026, Heidelberg, Germany.

  • [UKRI Digital Research Skills Catalyst travel scholarship] Awarded by UKRI Digital Research Skills Catalyst travel scholarship, for AICatalyst2026: AI in the Biosciences Training Conference, 4 September, York, UK

  • [Travel Grant]
    Awarded by AIBIO UK, a BBSRC network, UK, for AIBIO UK 3rd Annual Conference, 8-9 June, 2026, Aberdeen, UK.

  • [Travel Grant]
    Awarded travel grant by UKOMAIN, the UK Multimodal AI Network - an EPSRC funded network, for participation in the Fourth Workshop on Multimodal AI, held 11-12 June 2026, London, UK.

  • [Google Deepmind MenaML winter school travel grant]
    Awarded travel grant by Google DeepMind MenaML winter school, held 24-29 January 2026, KAUST, Saudi Arabia.

  • [NeuMat winter school travel grant]
    Awarded participation grant for NeuMat winter school, Churchil College, Cambridge University, Jan 2026, Churchil College, Cambridge University, UK.

  • [SICSA L&T Scholar] One of the 12 selected SICSA Learning and Teaching Scholars 2025-26, by SICSA

  • [Travel Grant]
    Awarded travel grant by UKOMAIN, the UK Multimodal AI Network - an EPSRC funded network, for participation in the Third Workshop on Multimodal AI, held 16-17 September 2025, London, UK.

  • [Best Researcher Awarded]
    Best Researcher Award for research achievements - awarded by COMSATS University Islamabad, Abbottabad, 05 October 2021.

  • [DAAD AI-Net Fellowship]
    Awarded the DAAD AI-Net Fellowship by DAAD (German Academic Exchange) for the 2021 AI Networking Tour, 13 - 17 September 2021.

  • [Kempe Foundation Postdoc Grant]
    Awarded the Kempe Foundation Research Grant for Postdoc research at Umea University, Sweden - starting from January 2020.

  • [Intel Edge AI Scholarship]
    Awarded the Intel Edge AI Scholarship for Intel AI foundation course on Udacity - starting from 16 December 2019.

  • [Best Poster Award]
    Our research poster “Computer-aided diagnosis of Tuberculosis in Medical Images: Machine Learning to the rescue” won first prize for research poster competition at TechFest 2019, organized by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, on 29th October 2019 at CUI Abbottabad Campus.

  • [EEML Travel Grant]
    Awarded travel grant by the Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School organized by Politehnica University of Bucharest, held from 1 - 6 July 2019 in Bucharest, Romania.

  • [Top 10 Research Pitch Award]
    Our research pitch was selected for the Top 10 pitches award by HEC Pakistan, in a national-level competition, organized by the University of Queensland, Australia, and the University of Haripur, Pakistan.

  • [HLF Germany Travel Grant]
    Awarded travel support grant by the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation to attend HLF 2017, at Heidelberg, Germany.

  • [Ignite NGIRI Grant]
    FYP grant of 75,000 PKR under the National Grassroot Research Initiative scheme, awarded by Ignite (formerly ICT R&D Fund) Pakistan.
    • Project: Recurrent Neural Network for EEG Signal Processing
    • Supervisor: Dr. Hazrat Ali
  • [HEC Research Grant]
    Research grant worth 0.241 million PKR, awarded by the Higher Education Commission Pakistan.
    • Project: Urdu handwritten characters recognition
    • PI: Dr. Hazrat Ali
    • Co-PI: Prof. Shahid Khattak

  • [HEC Travel Grant]
    Travel grant worth 0.27 million PKR for attending EANN 2016 conference in Aberdeen, UK.

  • [IEEE EMBS Student Travel Award]
    Awarded IEEE Travel Award to attend the IEEE EMBS Summer School on Neural Engineering, held in Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, 13 - 19 July 2015.

  • [USTB Excellent International Student Award]
    Awarded 2nd prize for the session 2013/2014 by the University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China.

  • [Travel Grant by Erasmus Mundus StrongTies]
    Funded by Erasmus Mundus StrongTies grant to attend Lisbon Machine Learning School at Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal, July 2014.

  • [QCRI/Boeing Travel Award]
    Awarded (4 consecutive years) by Qatar Computing Research Institute & Boeing to attend and present research posters at the Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium (MLDAS) in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 in Doha, Qatar.

  • [TERENA/CISCO Student Award]
    Funded by TERENA to attend and present a research poster at the TERENA Networking Conference (TNC2013) in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

  • [HEC Scholarship]
    Fully funded scholarship for the entire duration of PhD studies.