Egyptian Researchers in Computer Science

Three Years Later

Almost three years ago, I wrote a blog post about why I built a small website called “Egyptians in AI Research.” It started with a simple question someone asked me: “Are there Egyptians doing serious research in this field?”

This was around the time AI was starting to enter the mainstream. ChatGPT had just been released a few months earlier, and suddenly AI became a topic at dinner tables, in classrooms, and across the media — a trend that has only continued to grow since.

Having been working in the field myself, and having met many world-class researchers, some of whom were Egyptian, I felt a responsibility to make that talent more visible. I wanted, in whatever small way I could, to help people see the remarkable work coming out of their own community that is driving this cutting edge technology they are starting to use on a daily basis.

What I did not expect was how much that small website would continue to grow.

As I traveled for conferences to present my work, I started meeting people who knew me because of the website — not the other way around. I was invited to give a TEDx talk about why I created it. I received emails from students and researchers, thanking me for making something like that for the community.

That was the moment I realized this was no longer just a personal project.

It had become something shared.

Why Expand Beyond AI?

When I started, I focused on AI not only because it was my own world, but over time, two things became clear.

First, AI does not exist in isolation. It stands on top of decades of work in systems, theory, networking, security, databases, programming languages, human-computer interaction, and many other subfields.

Second, I kept encountering the same story again and again — from people outside AI:

“I didn’t know there were Egyptians doing this.”

Whether “this” meant distributed systems, cryptography, computational biology, or formal methods, the feeling was always the same: quiet excellence, largely invisible.

Expanding the website to all of Computer Science was not about changing direction. It was about completing the story.

A Call for “X in Y”

In my TEDx talk, I made a simple request.

I asked people from different fields to create similar projects — what I called “X in Y” websites — where X can be a nationality, culture, or identity, and Y can be any field where representation and visibility matter.

What I did not expect was how quickly people would respond.

Soon after, I received messages from people who created other similar projects — like “Moroccans in AI Research” and “Pakistanis in AI Research” — each one trying, in its own way, to make its community visible and heard.

Seeing that happen was deeply moving. It made it clear that this was never just about Egypt, or AI, or even Computer Science. It was about people everywhere wanting to tell a more complete story about who gets to build the future.

Inspiration as a Force

People from countries like Egypt are often given a very narrow view of what is possible.

From a young age, we are subtly, and sometimes explicitly, taught that certain things are “not for us”:
Not frontier research.
Not world-leading institutions.
Not shaping the future of technology.

And yet, when you see people who grew up in similar environments, went to similar schools, faced similar constraints — and still found their way into those spaces — something shifts.

I often say that we underestimate the power of inspiration.

Seeing what is possible changes what feels possible.

Doing This Together

The expansion of this website would not have been possible without Mohamed Dawoud, who helped enormously in growing, cleaning, organizing, and shaping the website. What started as a personal side project became a collaborative effort, and that shift mattered.

It changed the nature of the project, from something I was maintaining alone, to something that felt more like a shared responsibility toward a community. What’s New

The website now features:

262 Egyptian researchers across Computer Science at the time of writing this blog post.
A map showing where they are around the world.
Filtering by subfield is now much better than before to explore different areas.
A statistics page visualizing key distributions within the community (academia vs. industry, research areas, positions, etc.)
A redesigned UI and overall experience.

These are not just technical upgrades, they are ways of making the community more visible, more navigable, and more tangible.

Why This Still Matters

This project is still about that younger version of myself who believed meaningful contribution only came from elsewhere.

It is about students who quietly wonder whether people “like them” belong in global research communities.

Now, instead of pointing to a handful of names in one subfield, we can point to hundreds across an entire discipline.

And that matters.

Not because numbers matter — but because every name represents a story, a path, and a quiet act of persistence.

Looking Forward

This project will never be complete, and I think that’s a good thing.

As long as people are learning, researching, moving, building, and contributing, the list will grow, and so will the story it tells.

If you find yourself on the website, I hope it makes you feel seen.

And if you are a student reading this, I hope it gives a glimpse of what is possible.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who contributed names, corrections, feedback, and encouragement over the years. Thank you to Mohamed for helping carry this forward. And thank you to everyone quietly doing the work that makes this list possible.

Let’s keep making each other visible.

Website

https://egyptians-in-cs.github.io