Name: Abdeltawab Hendawi
URI Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Statistics
Email: hendawi@uri.edu
Pronouns: he/him/his
We welcomed several new professors on the tenure-track who began in the fall 2019 semester. Assistant Professor Abdeltawab Hendawi, Ph.D., joined the Department of Computer Science and Statistics. Dr. Hendawi received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 2015. Before his position at URI, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Virginia in their Department of Computer Science. “My role was to conduct cross-discipline research as a member in the LinkLab,” he says. “I also taught courses at graduate and undergraduate levels.” Accordingly, his research interests traverse issues in big data management and analytics.
Reflective of his interests and experience, Hendawi is now teaching courses in Computer Science at URI, including Database Systems. He looks forward to engaging with several research projects that pertain to smart cities. “In the last decade,” Hendawi says, “the evolution and wide availability of GPS-enabled mobile and wearable devices, such as smart phones and smart watches, triggered the explosion of location-based services under the umbrella of smart cities.” His work strives to improve data management and analysis systems’ handling of new data—important, future-focused work. “I strongly believe that the traditional location-aware services in its current theme will not fulfill the needs of this new era,” he says. “Thus, my vision is to make improvements, not only on the micro level of each type of location-aware services, but to also create a revolution on the holistic macro level.”
Hendawi is eager to move these projects forward through his work at URI, and he highlights URI’s new Data Science program as an exciting opportunity to conduct multi-disciplinary research. “URI is a great place to work,” he says, “as it is a research-based university that is well-known for a high quality of research and teaching.” To his students, particularly to students studying Computer Science, he offers: “I would advise computer science students at URI to take advantage of the new Data Science program to prepare themselves for the needs of the market.”
~Written by Aria Mia Loberti ’20