Dr. Anas bin Faris Al-Faris has been appointed the chief of King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) by royal decree.  Al-Faris is also an associate professor at KACST and a visiting associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. Prior to his latest promotion, he was the vice president of the research institute at KACST. He has served in this position since 2018. Al-Faris is a member of the Global Research Council, a board member at the Saudi Arabia Advanced Research Alliance, and the National Digital Transformation Executive Committee. He has broad research experience in diverse fields including big data analytics, strategic engineering and systems architecture. At KACST, he founded the Joint Centers of Excellence Program, which includes 14 joint centers with leading universities in the US and UK such as MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Oxford and Cambridge.  He is also the founder of the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at KACST and MIT as well as the Decision Support Center of KACST and Boeing.  Al-Faris created the Technical Leaders Program to train and qualify the new generation to become leaders. He holds a Ph.D. in design computation and a master’s degree in computation for design and optimization from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He also has two other master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania — a master of science computational design systems and a master of architecture in building technology.