Profiles

Professor Miguel Urbano, who joined KAUST in 2022, received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Analysis in 1999 from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Following a postdoctoral position at Northwestern University in the United States, he became an assistant professor at the University of Coimbra (UC), Portugal. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2004 at UC and awarded a habilitation in mathematics in 2005 before becoming a full professor in 2009.

Professor Urbano is the author of The Method of Intrinsic Scaling, published in the Lecture Notes in Mathematics series, and over 70 scientific papers on nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). He has served on panels evaluating grants and research projects for the European Union, the European Research Council, the Academy of Finland, the Latvian Council of Science, the Serrapilheira Institute of Brazil and the Portuguese Science Foundation.

Urbano served on Portugal's National Council for Science and Technology from 2012 to 2015, won the José Anastácio da Cunha Prize from the Portuguese Mathematical Society in 2002, and was an associate editor for Nonlinear Analysis from 2013 to 2021. He is a corresponding academician of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (elected in January 2021) and has been the editor-in-chief of Portugaliae Mathematica since January 2022.

Professor Miguel Urbano is an expert on free boundary problems and regularity theory for nonlinear PDEs, particularly on the method of intrinsic scaling for singular or degenerate-type equations.

He has made several contributions leading to a better understanding of the local behaviour of weak solutions, e.g., the derivation of a quantitative modulus of continuity for weak solutions of the two-phase Stefan problem, which models a phase transition at a constant temperature or the proof of a long-standing conjecture on the optimal regularity for solutions of the p-Poisson equation in the plane.

Dr. Sultan Albarakati is the Director of KAUST Academy and a key leader in STEM education in Saudi Arabia. In this role, he leads initiatives to provide world-class training and educational programs for Saudi students and professionals centered on upskilling the national workforce, particularly in artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science.

His work aims to support the Kingdom's rapidly transforming economy through partnerships with universities and industry while fostering talent development, contributing to National Talent Development in line with Vision 2030.

Dr. Albarakati earned his Ph.D. in 2020 and his M.S. in 2014, both in Applied Mathematics from KAUST, following a B.S. in Mathematics from Umm Al-Qura University in 2004. 

Before joining KAUST, he played a significant role in mentoring Saudi Arabia's Math Olympiad teams, leading them to notable international success.

Diogo Gomes is a professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (AMCS) at KAUST.

He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2000 from the University of California at Berkeley, U.S. Gomes completed his postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, U.S., in 2000, and at the University of Texas at Austin, U.S., in 2001. In 2006, he earned a Habilitation in Mathematics from the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal.

In recognition of his academic excellence, Gomes was awarded UC Berkeley’s Morrey Prize in 1997. He has served as Editor of Minimax Theory and its Applications and the Journal of Dynamics and Games and Dynamic Games and Applications.

Professor Gomes' work focuses on partial differential equations (PDEs), namely viscosity solutions to elliptic, parabolic and Hamilton-Jacobi equations.

His research encompasses classical PDE questions—such as well-posedness, existence and uniqueness and regularity theory—and numerical methods and their applications. Gomes is particularly interested in applying mean-field game models to social sciences, economics and finance.