About me

Welcome!

I am Fares Fourati, a Ph.D. candidate in machine learning at KAUST. My research aims to contribute to the progress toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), pushing the boundaries of AI beyond human-level intelligence with strong reasoning abilities, persistent long-term memory, and continual learning in large decision spaces. My work approaches these challenges through reinforcement learning, optimization, and large language models, combining both theoretical analysis and empirical investigation.

I am a published author (and reviewer) at top-tier AI/ML/NLP venues (ICML, AAAI, EMNLP, AISTATS, ECAI), and my work has been recognized with multiple awards. During my Ph.D., I was named to the CEMSE Dean’s List at KAUST for two consecutive years (2023/2024 and 2024/2025). I also won first place at the ACM-SIAM Student Competition (2024), was recognized as a KAUST AI Rising Star (2023), and secured first place at the Marconi Society’s Connectivity Summit (2021). Earlier, I became a Kaggle Competitions Expert (2020).

Beyond research, I am passionate about mentoring, writing, and teaching. I have taught courses in AI and machine learning, supervised graduate and undergraduate students, and guided aspiring students in their journey into AI.

My academic path began in Tunisia, where I ranked among the top 1% nationally in the Mathematics and Physics entrance exam for engineering schools. I earned my Diplôme d’Ingénieur in Multidisciplinary Engineering from École Polytechnique de Tunisie in 2020, followed by an M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from KAUST in 2022.

At the core, I am driven by a deep curiosity about intelligence, both human and artificial, and a belief that AI can transform how we understand ourselves, the world, and the challenges ahead. This curiosity also inspired my book, To What End? Meditations on AI and Humanity, which examines the philosophical dimensions of AI in the context of human progress.