PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY HOUARI BOUMEDIENE (USTHB)
Founding member of the Algerian Academy of Science and Technology (AAST)
After obtaining the baccalaureate in mathematics in 1975, ZERKAOUI DRIAS HABIBA studied computer science from 1975 to 1980 at the University of Science and Technology of Algiers (USTA now USTHB).
She continued her studies in the USA at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Cleveland Ohio where she obtained a Master’s degree in Computer Science in 1984.
She began a teaching and research career at USTHB in 1984. From 1988 to 1992, she prepared a PhD thesis in computer science at Paris 6 France which she supported in 1993. And was promoted to the rank of Lecturer in 1993. In 1999, she became a professor of higher education in computer science.
She was the head of the USTHB Computer Science Institute from 1995 to 1998. From 2003 to 2008, she was the Director General of the National Institute of Informatics (INI became ESI in 2008). She also contributed to the university’s scientific bodies as chair of scientific councils but also at the level of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. In this case, she initiated and supervised under the auspices of the Minister, the digitization of the baccalaureate students’ registration process in 2006. She currently manages the USTHB’s Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory (LRIA) which she founded in 2000.
In 2013, She was awarded the International Scopus Elsevier Algeria Computer Science Prize.
In 2015, she was selected on the basis of her scientific and managerial work by a jury of foreign academics as a founding member of the Algerian Academy of Sciences and Technologies (AAST), created on occasion under the supervision of the Presidency of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.
On the pedagogical level, she has taught in Algeria and abroad, computer science including computer architecture, computational complexity, compilation of computer languages and computer operating systems. She has also taught artificial intelligence and more specifically, problem solving, data mining, machine learning, multi-agent systems and swarm intelligence. She is the initiator in 2009 of the master’s degree in intelligent computer systems (MSII) at USTHB, very popular with students and recognized by foreign universities. She was responsible for this training from 2009 to 2015. During her 40 years of career, she published 3 books edited by the Office of univeristy publications (OPU). These 3 books are currently in the Algerian university libraries and serve as course materials for teachers and students.
In terms of research, she has published nearly 300 research papers in indexed international journals and conferences with over 2500 Google Scholar citations. The results of her most recent research in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, problem solving, data mining and information retrieval represent remarkable contributions to science and technology. In the publishing field, she has two scientific publications published by Springer, one by IEEE and a special issue of the Scopus-indexed ‘International Journal of Advanced Operations Management’ (IJAOM). She is a member of the review board of the international journal “Applied intelligence” with an impact factor of 5.3 and an associate editor for the journal “International Journal of Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications (IJCISIM)”, indexed by Scopus. In addition, She has led several national and international research projects and delivered several national and international expertises.
In terms of training, she has led 3 state doctoral theses, 26 doctoral theses and 37 master’s projects in computer science specialty artificial intelligence. The outgoing laureates work as research professors in Algerian universities and also abroad. In addition she supervised 31 state engineer projects, 20 master’s degree projects and 11 bachelor’s degree projects. The graduates in question work in the socio-economic sector in Algeria but many abroad.
In 2015/2016, she spent a gap year at the Biccoca-Milano University in Italy where she taught “Swarm Intelligence” to PhD students in the IT department.