Mérouane Debbah is a public speaker, educator and technology entrepreneur. He has founded multiple public and industrial research centers, start-ups and held executive positions in ICT companies. He is now Professor at Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi and founding Senior Director of KU Digital Future Institute. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international events in the field of telecommunication and AI. His research has been lying at the interface of fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information and communication sciences with a special focus on random matrix theory and learning algorithms. In the Communication field, he has been at the heart of the development of small cells (4G), Massive MIMO (5G) and Large Intelligent Surfaces (6G) technologies. In the AI field, he is known for his work on Large Language Models, distributed AI systems for networks and semantic communications. He received multiple prestigious distinctions, prizes and best paper awards (more than 50 IEEE best paper awards and more than100 patents) for his contributions to both fields and according to research.com is ranked as the best scientist in France in the field of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Eurasip Fellow, an AAIA Fellow, an Institut Louis Bachelier Fellow, an AIIA Fellow and a Membre émérite SEE. His recent work led to the development of NOOR (upon it release, largest language model in Arabic) released in 2022, Falcon LLM (upon its release, top ranked open source large language model) released in 2023 and the Falcon Foundation in 2024. The Falcon Model Series and The Falcon Foundation have positioned the UAE as a global leader in the generative AI field. In 2024, he pioneered the concept of TelecomGPT, the first comprehensive large language model (LLM) tailored for the telecom domain and was at the heart of new AI models called Large Perceptive Models that integrate multimodal IoT signals, real-time optimization, and intent-driven automation. In 2025, he was named in as one of the "50 Leaders at the Forefront of an AI-Driven Future in the Middle East" and "Arab's Most Influential Leaders in Tech".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9rouane_Debbah
