# Mérouane Debbah

Mérouane Debbah is a researcher, educator and technology entrepreneur. He has founded several public and industrial research centers, start-ups and held executive positions in ICT companies. He is professor at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and founding director of the Khalifa University 6G Research Center. His research has been at the interface of fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information and communication sciences with a special focus on random matrix theory and learning algorithms. In the AI field, he is known for his work on large language models, distributed AI systems for networks and semantic communications. In the communication field, he has been at the heart of the development of small cells (4G), massive MIMO (5G) and large intelligent surfaces (6G) technologies. He received more than 50 IEEE best-paper awards for his contributions to both fields and according to research.com is ranked as the best scientist in France in the field of electronics and electrical engineering.

## Early life and education

Debbah is a former student in Algeria of Lycée Cheikh Bouamama (ex-Descartes, Algiers, Algeria). After his classes préparatoires in Lycée Henri IV (Paris, France), he entered the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay in 1996 and obtained his PhD degree in 2002. His PhD thesis focused on a mathematical framework called free probability theory (a line of research which parallels aspects of classical probability in a non-commutative context) for the design of networks.

## Work

Debbah started his career at Motorola Labs in Saclay in 1999. In 2002, he joined the Telecommunication Research Center of Vienna in Austria as a senior researcher. His work focused on information theory and the development of models using maximum entropy principles.
From 2003 to 2007, he was an assistant professor at Eurecom in Sophia-Antipolis. His work focused mainly on the mathematical foundations of networks with the development of random matrix theory methods and game theory methods for signal processing and networks.
In 2007, he was appointed full professor at CentraleSupélec (campus of Gif-sur-Yvette) at the age of 31. At the same time, he founded and was director of the Alcatel-Lucent chair on flexible radio. This was the first industrial chair in telecommunication in France with close ties between CentraleSupélec and Bell Labs. The chair was at the heart of the development of the small cells and massive MIMO technologies, which were key technologies for respectively 4G and 5G. His pioneering work on Self-Organized Networks (SON) algorithms and Random Matrix Theory (RMT) not only advanced theoretical understanding but also facilitated the practical realization of scalable and high-performance 4G and 5G networks The chair focused also on training top scientists and formed more than 45 PhD and post-doctoral researchers, many of whom have become global leaders in the research field. By 2017, the telecommunication department of CentraleSupélec was ranked number one in France and number two in Europe. During that period, the European Commission awarded him an ERC (European Research Council) grant on random complex networks and an ERC POC (proof of concept) on wireless edge caching.
In 2014, he joined Huawei France as vice-president R&D and was the founding director of the Huawei Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab in Boulogne-Billancourt, with a special focus on mathematical sciences applied to AI, wireless, optical and networking systems. At the end of 2018, the lab established had more than 200 researchers and was considered as one of the very top places in the world for industrial R&D in the field of communication networks. The initial focus of the lab on 5G and polar codes was a massive win for the company, which had built up a significant patents position in the domain and were adopted by 3GPP, the standards group that presides over cellular technology. He contributed to more than 40 patents in the field.
In 2018, he advocates the need to invest massively in the mathematics of computing and established a year later as founding director the Lagrange Mathematics and Computing Research center in Paris. The Lagrange research center focused on the promotion of fundamental research on the foundations of mathematics of computing and data science, as well as to expand the horizons of the field by exploring other scientific disciplines through a computational and mathematics lens. The center, which hosted several Medal Fields, was built on a unique innovative structure model for industry, based on open long-term research grants that support pioneering projects for top scientists. The center was a precursor in the development of the fundamentals of AI using advanced mathematical tools with disruptive projects on Mean Field Game Theory, Optimal Transport Theory, Topos Theory and Bayesian Methods just to name a few.
In 2021, he joined the new Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi as chief researcher and then in 2023 as Chief AI Senior Advisor. The institute aimed to bring together top tier talent from across the globe to research and develop disruptive technological innovations for the benefit of science, the economy and the environment. He founded the AI and Digital Science Research Center with a focus on telecommunications, AI, and cyber-security. Predicting the massive use of generative AI, he built very early in 2021 an elite team to focus on training Large Language Models. This was a massive win for the institute. By 2023, the center grew to more than 80 people and was pioneer in the region in the development of large language models with the development of NOOR (upon its release, largest language model in Arabic) released in 2022 and Falcon LLM (upon its release, top ranked open source large language model) released in 2023. The Falcon Foundation, with an initial fund of $300m, was also created as a non-profit organisation to support open source AI research projects in collaboration with academia and industry leaders. The Falcon Model Series and The Falcon Foundation have positioned the UAE as a global leader in the generative AI field.
In 2023, he was appointed full professor at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi and established as founding director the Khalifa University 6G Research Center. Advocating the vision of a world of massive collective artificial intelligence, his work focused on developing the infrastructure, protocols and platforms that connect and ground intelligence. He put into place in 2024 as chair the IEEE Large Generative AI Models in Telecom (GenAINet) Emerging Technology Initiative. With his group, he pioneered the concept of TelecomGPT, the first comprehensive large language model (LLM) tailored for the telecom domain. His group extended rapidly the TelecomGPT framework with new AI models that integrate multimodal IoT signals, real-time optimization, and intent-driven automation. In collaboration with GSMA, his group launches during the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona the first open leaderboard for large language models (LLMs) gathering more than 20 stakeholders (manufacturers and operators) to provide key LLM evaluation benchmarks in the telecom domain.

## Science and policy role

Debbah has been involved in global telecommunications policies and AI strategies. On the telecommunication front, jointly with the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), his group released in 2024 the UAE's Strategic Vision for 6G to drive innovation and setting ambitious goals for the next generation of wireless communication. On the AI front, he served as the president of the AI Scientific Council of Algeria which issued the National AI Strategy on December 7, 2024.

## Professional recognition

* SEE Blondel Medal (2020), IEEE/SEE Glavieux Prize Award (2011)
* EMEA Industrial Innovation Award of the IEEE Communications Society (2024), IEEE Radio Communications Committee Technical Recognition Award (2019)
His papers have received more than 50 awards, among which:
* 2024 IEEE ComSoc CSIM TC Best Journal Paper Award
* 2024 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize
* 2024 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award
* 2023 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication
* 2023 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize
* 2022 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award
* 2021 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award
* 2021 EURASIP Best Paper Award
* 2019 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award
* 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award
* 2017 EURASIP Best Paper Award
* 2016 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award
* 2015 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize
* 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize