May Almousa is an Assistant Professor in the College of Computer and Information Sciences at Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), where she also leads the Information Security track at the PNU AI Center. She earned her B.Sc. with honors in Computer Science from PNU in 2009, receiving the award for best undergraduate project. She completed her M.Sc. (2016) and Ph.D. (2022) in Computer Science at North Carolina A&T State University, where she was recognized at the College of Engineering’s annual graduation receptions for her outstanding academic achievements. Following her Ph.D., she served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Human-Centered AI (HCAI) Lab, contributing to projects on social semantic attack detection, ransomware identification, privacy design, and AI-driven human–computer interaction. Her research focuses on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning algorithms, and data science, with an emphasis on developing intelligent and ethical systems to strengthen resilience against emerging threats.

During the fellowship, her research will focus on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and quantum computing to strengthen defenses for critical infrastructures, particularly operational technology (OT) systems. The project will engineer structured datasets of real-world OT cyberattacks and utilize advanced algorithms techniques to develop machine learning and deep learning models for ransomware detection, phishing identification, semantic attack analysis, and network intrusion prevention. At the same time, it will investigate the dual-use nature of AI and quantum technologies, highlighting their role in both defense—through anomaly detection, automated response, and predictive analytics—and offense, including AI-driven phishing, automated exploit discovery, adversarial machine learning, and quantum-based cryptographic threats. Ultimately, her work will deliver adaptive, scalable, and trustworthy cybersecurity frameworks that evolve with emerging risks, safeguarding cyber-physical systems in the AI and quantum era.