Dr. Basem Shihada has been appointed Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Mathematical and Computer Science and Engineering Division at KAUST. He joint Stanford University as a visting faculty in Stanford Computer Science in 2008.

Prior to his appointment at KAUST, Dr. Shihada was a research associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He conducts research on topics of high-speed computer networks, network security, and distributed systems. Dr. Shihada has served on the review process of several international journals and conferences, and as publication chair for the International Symposium on Broadband Access Technologies in Metropolitan Area Networks, (ISBAT 06) in Canada in 2006.

Dr. Shihada has written research proposals and managed a research team. In 2003, he was responsible for designing the user-access layer and the grid-service-provisioning layer in the joint Canarie, Canada Research Center and Cisco Canada, research and development project entitled, "User controlled lightPaths". In 2004, Dr. Shihada was among the pioneers in conducting research on investigating the congestion control issues of Transport Control Protocol (TCP) over next-generation bufferless optical networks. Currently, he is working on the TCP behaviors and performance enhancement on heterogeneous and hybrid networks. Also, Dr. Shihada’s current research covers a wide range of topics in broadband wired and wireless communication networks, including wireless Metropolitan Area Networks such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE 802.16 networks, Fiber-Wireless (FIWI) network integration, and optical networks.

In 1997 he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the UAE University. In 2001, he obtained a Master's degree in Computer Science from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. In 2007, he obtained a PhD degree in Computer Science, University of Waterloo, David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Canada.