Dr. Munir bin Mahmoud El-Desouki

Dr. Munir bin Mahmoud El-Desouki has supervised the founding team of the newly approved Research, Development and Innovation Authority since July 2. He was also appointed as adviser to the authority’s chairman.

El-Desouki has also served as acting president of King

Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) since April 2021, as well as assistant minister at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) since February 2020.

He also worked as deputy minister for development and planning at the MCIT and senior adviser to the minister of MCIT.

El-Desouki has served on and chaired several national committees, held a number of positions in KACST and won numerous awards and prizes, including the 2014 Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Prize for inventors and the talented (Takreem) for his invention in electrical engineering, called “Development through Time Integration.”

He gained a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in 2002. He also received an M.A.Sc. in electrical and computer engineering from McMaster University, Canada, in 2005.

Two years later, he completed a master’s degree in engineering entrepreneurship and innovation from McMaster University. In 2010, he obtained a Ph.D. from the same university in electrical and computer engineering, specializing in CMOS sensors for low-level light biomedical applications, in addition to CMOS sensors for high-speed non-invasive fluorescence lifetime imaging systems.