Ibrahim Al-kadi

Ibrahim A. Al-Kadi, Ph.D. (born March 6, 1954) is a Saudi electrical engineer, known especially for his work on cryptology history and in the telecom regulation sector.

Biography

Al-Kadi was born in Onizah, Saudi Arabia. He lived there for 15 years before moving to Riyadh where he attended Al-Yamamah high school.

Education

* Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USAPh.D. Electrical Engineering Sept. 1984

* University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USAM.Sc. Electrical Engineering Aug. 1980

* University of Riyadh (currently King Saud University), Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaB.Sc. Electrical Engineering June 1978

Career

Academic

* Electrical Engineering Dept., College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:
** Professor "5/1997- 2004"
**Associate professor "11/1988 - 5/1997"
** Assistant Professor "8/1984 - 11/1988"
** Graduate Assistant "6/1978 - 8/1984"

* Stanford University, Communication Satellite Planning Center, Space Telecommunications and Radio Science Laboratory (STARLAB), CA, USA:
**Research Assistant "9/1981 - 8/1984"

Industrial

* Advanced Electronics Company (AEC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:
**Vice President for Research & Development "6 - 10 /1994"
**Vice President for Engineering "8/1991 - 6/1994"
**Executive Consultant "1994 - 2002"

Consultation

Dr. Kadi has performed consultancy services to government agencies, private sector and some international organizations including the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and the World Bank.

Telecom Regulation

Dr. Kadi is currently (as of 2006) Senior Advisor, Communication & Information Technology Commission (CITC), the regulatory authority in Saudi Arabia.

Prof. Kadi also held a leading international post as the ITU Representative to the Arab States and Head of the ITU Arab Regional Office in Cairo, Egypt (2002-2003), where he was responsible for planning, organizing and managing the work of the Arab Regional Office to fulfill the development of the telecommunication and IT sectors in the Arab Region.

Works

Dr. Kadi has published over a 100 scientific papers, research reports, articles, book translations, general-interest and literary works. He participated in over 80 conferences and seminars and gave numerous technical and business presentations.

His areas of expertise include Communication engineering, Telecommunication Planning and Management, Information Economy, Cryptology & Information Security, Socio-economic Impact of Technology, and ICT Policies and Regulation. He is an expert in spectrum management and emerging mobile technology and business trends.

Origins of Cryptology

In a 1990 paper presented to the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (ref-1), Al-Kadi reported on several Arab scientists’ work in cryptography and cryptanalysis (based on recently discovered scripts).

One of the those Dr. Al-Kadi reported on was Al- Kindi, who wrote a book on cryptology, the "Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu'amma" (Manuscript for the Deciphering Cryptographic Messages), circa 850CE. This book apparently antedates Western European cryptography works by 300 years and predates writings on probability and statistics by Pascal and Fermat by nearly 800 years.

The paper also discusses the etymology of the term "cipher" and reports recent historical discoveries about numerous cryptogrphic topics including frequency analysis and polyalphabetic ciphers.

Professional Membership

Dr. Kadi is a member of different scientific and professional organizations including Saudi Computer Society, International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), Saudi Association for Mathematical Sciences (SAMS), and Saudi Economics Association (SEA). He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

References

*Ibrahim A. Al-Kadi ,"The origins of cryptology: The Arab contributions”, Cryptologia, 16(2) (April 1992) pp. 97–126.

*Ibrahim A. Al-Kadi , "Cryptography and Data Security:Cryptographic Properties of Arabic, proceedings of the Third Saudi Engineering Conference. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Nov 24-27, Vol 2:910-921., 1991.

External links

* [http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/imt-2000/documents/Tunis2005/Bios/IbrahimKadi.PDF Online Biography: ITU ]
*http://www.ksu.edu.sa
*http://www.citc.gov.sa
*http://www.ituarabic.org