Karim Ali
Co-PI at New York University Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKarim Ali is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Co-PI based in Abu Dhabi with 13 years of experience bridging programming languages research and practical security tooling. He earned his PhD from the University of Waterloo and after a postdoc at TU Darmstadt held faculty positions at the University of Alberta before joining NYU Abu Dhabi and SANAD Research Lab. His lab focuses on scalable, precise, and usable program analyses, with work spanning theory, JIT compilers, and security applications. Karim has contributed to high-impact open-source security tooling—improving CodeQL queries and tests to detect insecure encryption patterns and align with OWASP guidance—bringing research insights directly into developer-facing tools. He combines rigorous academic contributions with hands-on engineering to make static analysis both more practical and more secure.
13 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Science at The American University in CairoMaster of Mathematics (MMath), Computer Science, Master of Mathematics (MMath), Computer Science at University of Waterloo
Arabic, English
Github Skills (6)
it-security10
swift10
cryptography10
codeql10
security10
testing9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
github/codeql
Sep 2022 - Nov 2022
CodeQL: the libraries and queries that power security researchers around the world, as well as code scanning in GitHub Advanced Security
Role in this project:
Security Engineer
Security EngineerContributions:50 reviews, 66 commits, 10 PRs in 2 months
Contributions summary:Karim primarily contributed to improving the security analysis capabilities of the CodeQL repository. They added new queries to detect vulnerabilities related to insecure encryption practices, specifically focusing on the use of the ECB block mode and hardcoded keys, passwords, and salts. Furthermore, they added tests to detect constant IVs, and also updated tests to match the OWASP recommendation.
github-advanced-securitysecurity-toolsgithub-security-labsecurity-researcherssecurity
themaplelab/scalacg
Feb 2013 - Apr 2021
Contributions:305 commits, 1 push, 2 comments in 8 years 3 months
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