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Biography
Dr. Ahmed Kattan is the deputy minister for strategy and planning in Ministry of Industry and Minerals Resources.
He was Acting Associate Minister for City Operators and Compliance in Ministry of Municipal, Rural Affairs, and Housing between 2021 until 2023. During his service in this post, he lunched 20+ new products and services from the municipal sector across the country. In addition, he was a board member in The Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones (MODON), Saudi Foods and Drugs Authority, Public Health Authority, and Saudi Contractors Authority
From 2020 to 2021 he was a deputy minister for Cities Operators in the same Ministry. During his appointment, as deputy minister, he changed the contractors’ pre-qualification system of government procurement. Moreover, he established regulations and procedures for dorms and occupational trade licensing. He was delegated to act on several missions including: General Director of the Organisation Management department, and Under-Secretary-General and spokesman of Labour Housing Committee during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to this position, he was a senior advisor to the minister in Ministry of Commerce and Investment, board member of the Saudi Post, and a member in the national Labour Policies Committee from 2018 to 2019. He was Deputy Minister for labour policies in Ministry of Labor and Social Development, and a board member of SME commission, from 2015 to 2018. During this period, he launched more than 33 policies related to the labour market and managed many national projects to enhance the labour market. Dr. Kattan represented the government in multiple international events including: G20 preparatory meetings in Argentina, Saudi-Malaysian bilateral collaboration in labour market, Saudi-British economic offset, and World Bank ease of doing business index workshops. In addition, he was spokesman of labour market's policies in local and international media.
Prior to his contributions in the public sector, Dr. Kattan served in academia. He was an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Um Al-Qura University (Saudi Arabia) from 2011 to 2015. From 2011 until 2013, Dr. Kattan was appointed as Head of the Computer Science Department. Under his management, the department was accredited full six-years by the ABET. In addition, he was a visiting research professor at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) in 2014 and 2015. In 2010, he worked as a research associate, in the computer science department at Loughborough University (UK), in the area of game theory and evolutionary computation research. Moreover, he was teaching as graduate teaching assistant (GTA) in School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at University of Essex (UK) in 2007. Dr. Kattan is also the founder of the CEEC conference series that have started in 2009. His main contributions to science have been in the area of Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and the applications of Genetic Programming (GP). To that extent, Dr. Kattan has developed a series of universal compression systems based on the GP referred to as the GP-zip family. In addition, he proposed several new novel algorithms based on the use of GP for several applications such as: data type analysis, Muscle Fatigue prediction and problem decomposition. Dr. Kattan published more than 40 international peer reviewed papers and journals. He is serving as a reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Man and Systems Part B, IEEE Transaction on Evolutionary Computation and Elsevier Informatics and Computer Science Intelligent Systems among several other international conferences in the field of Evolutionary Computation.
Dr. Kattan also worked as a consultant with several organisations in Saudi Arabia including Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Hajj, Prince Mugrin university, Makkah Municipality. At the beginning of his career, he worked as programmer and project manager in several private sector companies such as K-Corp, Al Massar, and Integrated Vision. In 2013, he founded a startup company specialised in data analytics and decision support. The company produced several successful mobile applications products and was acquired by a major Saudi IT company in 2017.
In 2010, Ahmed received his PhD degree from the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at University of Essex (UK) specialised in Artificial Intelligence. He received his MSc in Software Engineering from the same university in 2007 and his Bsc with major in Computer Science from Jordan University of Science and Technology (Jordan) in 2005.
Organisations that I worked for
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