Shrooq Alsenan wins Women in Tech Leadership Award

Dr. Shrooq Alsenan recently won The Women in Tech Leadership Award during the Datacentre & Cloud Infrastructure Summit (DCCI) 2025 in Riyadh.

This award reflects Alsenan’s commitment to using AI for the good of humanity and creating opportunities for others to advance their skills in computing and artificial intelligence.

Alsenan began her education journey with a double major in Computer Science and the Study of Languages. By the time she pursued her master’s degree, she had identified Computer Science as a field where she could make the most meaningful contribution to society. When she completed her PhD from King Saud University, she won the university’s award for the best dissertation that year. Additionally, she was awarded the Ibn Khaldun Fellowship and came to MIT in 2022 as a postdoctoral fellow.

During her one short year at MIT, Alsenan worked closely with Professor Regina Barzilay, faculty co-lead for AI at the Jameel Clinic, and other collaborators on applying AI and deep learning approaches to improving health outcomes. She also served at a consultant at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 1st global initiative on AI for health (GI-AI4H) in Geneva on 'Interpretable and automated bias detection for AI in healthcare.'

However, it was when Alsenan returned to Saudi Arabia in 2023 and began a new role as an Assistant Professor at Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) that she began creating broad-based opportunities for others to strengthen their skills in AI. She founded the Artificial Intelligence Center at PNU in 2024, which quickly grew to include over 100 researchers. The Center aims to solve real-world problems aligned with pressing societal needs. Today, the Center collaborates with numerous national partners to advance research and explore new avenues of innovation. It now serves as a vital bridge between the labor market and academia.