Abdulrahman Aleid

Guided by meaning-aware robots

CMU MechE | KFUPM EPP Fellow | Professor-in-the-making

About Me

Why can’t I just tell a robot what to do, and it just does it?”

I’m Abdulrahman Aleid, a CMU graduate student and a KFUPM Emerging Professor (EPP) fellow. EPP funds my MS/PhD and commits me to return as faculty, so the question guiding my doctoral years is what kind of robotics presence I will build when I return as a professor.

I value questions that pursue fundamental understanding over performance, and I prefer unanswered questions to answers that cannot be questioned. I am curious about embodied representations, explainability, and the role of structure and inductive bias in learning systems. Fascinated by nature’s imagination, I’m interested in what cognitive science can offer robotics and AI, not models that fit today’s data, but representations that let future agents build world models and keep learning “gracefully”.

I see professorship as leadership first. Alongside my research, I am passionate about creating environments where people grow faster together than they could alone. I founded JISR, a nonprofit organization dedicated to embedding inquiry as a defining element of our culture in pursuit of a future learning society.

RESUME/CV

Projects

Impact

  • Global Students Research Conference (GSR) | Founder (Feb 2025)

    Built and led GSR, a fully student-run 3-day research platform: 5,000+ attendees, 170 student researchers presenting (70% international), and a first-edition budget of about $1.1M.

  • Rhodes Scholarship | Finalist (Saudi Arabia constituency) (2023)

  • CASE Best of Asia-Pacific (Student Engagement), 2025

  • Best Prototype | CMU MechE Spring Design Expo (24-788) (2025)

    Awarded to the RGB-only real-time gesture recognition for screen control project

  • KFUPM Mechanical Engineering Design and Research Exhibition | Gold Medal (2024)

    Awarded for top undergraduate research presentation.

  • KFUPM Annual Chemistry Contest | 1st Place (2023, 2024)

    Won twice presenting and explaining a committee-selected cutting-edge chemistry paper outside my major.

  • CHEMATHON | Top 10 Best Research Presentation

    Research competition open to students across Saudi and Gulf universities.

  • Student Tutoring Program (2023–2024)

    Selected in the program to tutor across multiple terms and courses: ME 203 Thermodynamics I, ME 322 Manufacturing Processes, PHYS 101 General Physics I, PHYS 102 General Physics II. Delivered concept reviews, assignment support, and mentoring.

  • 7th International Conference on Energy Economics and Energy Policy (Spain, 2023)

  • ACS Spring 2024, Many Flavors of Chemistry (USA, 2024)