Shaikhah Alkhadhr

Assistant Professor · Kuwait University

Dr. Shaikhah
Alkhadhr

Computer engineer and educator working at the intersection of physics-informed machine learning, AI safety, and AI for cybersecurity.

Explore research GitHub ↗
Department of Information Science College of Life Sciences
Ph.D., Computer Science & Engineering · 2023
Dr. Shaikhah Alkhadhr

About

A short bio.

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science at Kuwait University's College of Life Sciences. I hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Penn State (2023), where my dissertation — Modeling a Clinical Acoustic Information System Using Physics-Informed Machine Learning — combined deep learning with the governing physics of ultrasound wave propagation for use in medical imaging and therapy.

Before the Ph.D., I earned my M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Computer Engineering at Kuwait University, and I spent six years in the field — first in Network Security at the KU Center of Information Systems, then as a Computer Engineer in the Vice Dean Office for Development and Planning coordinating university-wide IT projects.

My current research sits across three threads: physics-informed neural networks for wave equations and clinical acoustics, AI safety for large language models, and AI for cybersecurity. In the classroom I teach foundational courses in computing and build interactive tools — like Device Anatomy — to make hardware tangible for students.

Education

Degrees.

2023

Ph.D. — Computer Science and Engineering

Pennsylvania State University, USA

Modeling a Clinical Acoustic Information System Using Physics-Informed Machine Learning

2016

M.Sc. — Computer Engineering

Kuwait University

Mitigating the Effects of Replay Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

2011

B.Sc. — Computer Engineering

Kuwait University

Graduation Project — Eye-hint Footprint for the Visually Impaired

Research

What I'm working on.

Four active research threads — each linked to representative publications, code, or paper artifacts.

SciML · Clinical Acoustics

Physics-Informed Neural Networks

PINN-based modeling of ultrasound wave propagation in homogeneous and inhomogeneous media — including multi-frequency encoding, attention to loss weights, and treatment of soft / hard initial-boundary conditions. Core focus of my Ph.D. work and ongoing.

PINN Wave Equation Ultrasound
See publications
AI Safety · LLM Security

HybridGuard

A hybrid framework for detecting prompt-injection and jailbreak attempts against large language models. Combines deterministic signature checks with learned classifiers, evaluated on adversarial benchmarks.

Prompt Injection Red Teaming LLMs
View repository
AI for Cybersecurity

AI & Cybersecurity

Notebooks and datasets that demonstrate how machine learning supports phishing detection, network-traffic anomaly detection, and real-time threat monitoring. Designed for both research and classroom use.

Phishing Anomaly Detection Network Security
View repository
Information Security & Privacy

Networks & Information Security

Earlier and ongoing work on securing wireless sensor networks against replay attacks (AODV-based defenses), cryptographic and randomization techniques for secure data disposal, and characterizing cyber threats to children and teenagers on online social networks.

Wireless Sensor Networks Cryptography Privacy
See publications
Environmental Health · Campus

Heatwatch

Heat-stress monitoring on the Kuwait University campus — an active research project addressing student and staff safety under Kuwait's extreme summer conditions.

Heat Stress Campus Safety Environmental Health
Team: Dr. Zahraa Marafie (Information Science, KU) · Abdelrahman Alshabrawi · Jareen Anjom

Publications

Selected work.

Peer-reviewed journal and conference publications, reverse chronological. Titles link to DOI where available. Full list also on ORCID.

  1. 2025

    Designing Non-Human Enclosures in ChatGPT: A Prompt-Based Approach

    Alshaheen, R., Alkhadhr, S., & Borahmah, D.

    International Journal of Architectural Computing, 14780771251352960.

  2. 2024

    Multifrequency Encoding in PINNs for Precision Wave Equation Modeling in Inhomogeneous Media

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    IEEE UFFC Joint Symposium.

  3. 2023

    Modeling the Wave Equation Using Physics-Informed Neural Networks Enhanced With Attention to Loss Weights

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    ICASSP 2023 — IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing.

  4. 2023

    Wave Equation Modeling via Physics-Informed Neural Networks: Models of Soft and Hard Constraints for Initial and Boundary Conditions

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    Sensors, 23(5), 2792.

  5. 2022

    Physics-Informed Neural Networks with Resampling Technique to Model Ultrasound Wave Propagation of a Multi-Element Transducer

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium.

  6. 2021

    A Combination of Deep Neural Networks and Physics to Solve the Inverse Problem of Burger's Equation

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    IEEE EMBC Conference.

  7. 2021

    Modeling the Forward Wave Propagation Using Physics-Informed Neural Networks

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium.

  8. 2021

    Modeling of the Wave Propagation of a Multi-Element Ultrasound Transducer Using Neural Networks

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium.

  9. 2021

    PINN Simulation of the Temperature Rise Due to Ultrasound Wave Propagation

    Alkhadhr, S., & Almekkawy, M.

    IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium.

  10. 2018

    Securing Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks: Working with What the Node Can Offer

    Alkhadhr, S.

    IEEE International Conference on Computing Sciences and Engineering.

  11. 2017

    E-Learning Systems Requirements Elicitation

    Alkhadhr, S., & AlAli, F.

    International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 7(1), 44–55.

  12. 2017

    Cryptography and Randomization to Dispose of Data and Boost System Security

    Alkhadhr, S., & Alkandari, M.

    Cogent Engineering.

  13. 2016

    Mining Attributes of Cyber Threats to Children and Teenagers of Kuwait in Online Social Networks

    Alkhuder, S., Burhama, D., & Alsumait, L.

    Ministry of Interior National Conference for Protecting Children Safety on Social Networks.

Teaching

In the classroom.

Department of Information Science, College of Life Sciences, Kuwait University.

ISC230 · Course

IT Infrastructure

Foundational course on computer organization and IT infrastructure, aligned to Tanenbaum & Austin's Structured Computer Organization (6th ed.). Covers the levels of a computer, processors and memory hierarchy, secondary storage, I/O, digital logic, and pipelining.

Computer Organization Tanenbaum 6e Kuwait University
Open the course tool — Device Anatomy
Teaching Artifact

Device Anatomy

An interactive 3D explorer that lets students take apart real laptops, tablets, and phones — exploding layers, tracing data flows, zooming from board to chip to DRAM cell, and connecting every component back to a Tanenbaum chapter and ISC230 learning outcome.

three.js WebGL Interactive Learning
Source on GitHub

Courses taught

Department of Information Science, Kuwait University.

Student Projects

What students built.

A selection of recent course projects. Project titles are linked when the team's repository is public.

ISC230 — IT Infrastructure · Spring 2026

Each team built a working parallel-vs-sequential implementation and reported on Amdahl's Law and measured speed-ups.

ISC230 · Parallel Computing

Parallel Word Counter

Counts word frequencies across 10 books, comparing a sequential loop with a Python multiprocessing Pool that maps books across worker processes.

Python multiprocessing
Team: Sara Saed · Afnan Alfalah
View repository
ISC230 · Parallel Computing

Parallel Image Processing

Sequential vs parallel pipeline for grayscale conversion and resizing across 100 images. The team measured runtimes, scaled worker counts, and analyzed performance against Amdahl's Law.

Python Colab Amdahl's Law
Team: Ahmad Sheet · Mohammad
ISC230 · Parallel Computing

Parallel Password Hash Checker

Parallel dictionary-attack simulator that compares the performance and security characteristics of two hashing algorithms using Python's multiprocessing.

Hashing bcrypt multiprocessing
Team: J. Alfailakawi
ISC230 · Parallel Computing

CPU vs GPU Speed Test

PyTorch neural-network training timed on CPU vs GPU with matched models and parameters, demonstrating how GPU parallelism shifts performance characteristics.

PyTorch GPU Benchmarking
Team: Salma Elhosany
View repository
ISC230 · Parallel Computing

Parallel Web Scraper

High-speed data extraction from Books to Scrape, collecting 1,000 books across 50 pages in parallel with a ThreadPoolExecutor of 16 workers rather than a serial fetch.

requests BeautifulSoup ThreadPoolExecutor
Team: Sultan Fahed
View repository

ISC353 — Information Systems Security · Spring 2026

Hands-on security engineering with realistic threat models, attacker simulations, and defensive implementations.

ISC353 · Offensive Security

Web Application Penetration Testing Lab

Practical pen-testing of DVWA and OWASP Juice Shop through a Burp Suite proxy, identifying and exploiting common web-application vulnerabilities and documenting mitigations.

Burp Suite DVWA OWASP Juice Shop
Team: Aisha Almutairi
View repository
ISC353 · Awareness & Training

Phishing Awareness Simulation

End-to-end phishing campaign built with GoPhish on Kali Linux to test user awareness in a controlled educational setting, with analysis of click-through behavior and recommended training improvements.

GoPhish Kali Linux Awareness
Team: Hajer Alajmi · Hajar Alsahaib
View repository
ISC353 · Malware Analysis

AES-256 Ransomware Simulator

A reversible ransomware behavior simulator for controlled malware analysis. Cannot spread, persist, or operate outside its designated sandbox directory — built under instructor supervision in an isolated VM.

AES-256 Sandboxing Educational
Team: Mohammed (mohe4488)
View repository
ISC353 · Defensive Engineering

Secure Authentication with MFA

Flask web application implementing Argon2id password hashing, TOTP-based multi-factor authentication, JWT sessions, rate limiting, and progressive account lockout — paired with brute-force and credential-stuffing scripts to empirically validate every defense.

Flask Argon2id TOTP JWT
Team: Mahnoor Akhtar · Rana Omar
View repository

Advising

Graduate supervision.

Current graduate students I co-advise on research and capstone projects.

Graduate Student

Anfal Malallah

Topic · ISO/IEC 27035 compliance · EB-IMAT

Co-advised with Prof. Kassem Saleh

Experience

Professional path.

Feb 2024 — Present

Assistant Professor

Department of Information Science, Kuwait University

Sep — Dec 2022

Lecturer Assistant

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Pennsylvania State University

Oct 2015 — 2018

Computer Engineer

Vice Dean Office of Development and Planning, Kuwait University — coordinated university-wide IT projects, implemented server virtualization, supported KU's international ranking submissions

Dec 2012 — 2015

Junior Computer Engineer

Network Security Section, Center of Information Systems, Kuwait University — Cisco firewalls, VPNs, SSL certificates

Sep 2011 — 2012

Teaching Assistant

Department of Computer Engineering, Kuwait University — C++ and Java labs, online course development

Service: Coordinator of the Research and Graduate Studies Committee, and member of the Social and Student Activities Committee — both in the Department of Information Science. Reviewer for the IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium and Cogent OA publications.

Certifications

Professional credentials.

Contact

Get in touch.

For research collaboration, supervision inquiries, or invited talks.