Dr. Esam Mahdi is an Associate Professor at Qatar University. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He has wide experience in teaching Mathematics and Statistics at several universities in different countries. Dr. Mahdi has worked as a senior consultant at national, regional, and international levels with the World Bank, European Union, Norwegian Refugee Council, United Nations Development Program, International Committee of the Red Cross, and Palestinian and Canadian Governments. His research interests include time series analysis, quantile regression, machine learning, spatio-temporal analysis, and functional-structural MRI.