Honored to share that I’ve received the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers (2025) in the AI and Arabic Language category. This recognition reflects the sustained work of my students, collaborators, and mentors—thank you. I’m grateful for the chance to advance Arabic AI/NLP in service of our communities. About the award: Established in 1982 by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation—the Arab Bank’s cultural and social responsibility arm—the award recognizes outstanding scientific contributions by Arab researchers across disciplines. #AI #ArabicNLP #NLP #LLMs #Research #ArabWorld

I was glad to speak with @CBC about #AI for Inuktitut, a conversation with broader relevance for low-resource languages. As the world debates the pace of AI development, we need sustained investment in languages that remain underserved by today’s technology. This work should reflect the priorities of the communities it serves. For Indigenous languages, community leadership and data sovereignty are essential. Thank you to Liam Baker for highlighting this important conversation. Read the CBC article: cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inu… #LowResourceLanguages #IndigenousLanguages #AI #DataSovereignty @UBCLinguistics @UBCiSchool @UBC_CS @UBCLangScis

Registration is open for ArabicNLP2026. Looking forward to a great conference!

Tomorrow, July 7, we will present our large-scale Alexandria project at ACL 2026 in San Diego! 🧬Alexandria: A Multi-Domain Dialectal Arabic Machine Translation Dataset for Culturally Inclusive and Linguistically Diverse LLMs aclanthology.org/2026.acl-lo… 📍 Poster Session D 🕚 11:00 AM 📌 Panel C-57 🏛️ Coronado Ballroom, Level 4 📅 July 7, 2026 Alexandria is a large-scale, community-driven dataset for dialectal Arabic machine translation, designed to support culturally inclusive and linguistically diverse AI. It covers multiple Arab countries, domains, local varieties, and speaker–addressee configurations, helping move Arabic NLP beyond coarse dialect labels and toward more grounded evaluation of real language variation. Looking forward to discussing dialectal Arabic MT, culturally grounded evaluation, and how we can build more efficient and diverse AI. Abdellah EL Mekki, Ph.D., Samar M. Magdy, Houdaifa Atou, Ruwa AbuHweidi, Baraah Qawasmeh, OMER NACAR, Thikra Al-hibiri, Razan Saadie, Hamzah Alsayadi, Nadia Ghezaiel Hammouda, Alshima Mohammed Alkhazimi, Aya Hamod, Al-Yas Yaqoob Al-Ghafri, Wesam Ali El-Sayed, Asila Ismail al Sharji, Mohamad Ballout, Anas Belfathi, Karim Ghaddar, Serry Sibaee, Alaa Aoun, Aeej Mohammed Aseri, Lina Abureesh, Ahlam Bashiti, Majdal Yousef, Abdulaziz Hafiz, Yehdih Mohamed, Emira Hamedtou, Brakehe Emehah, Rahaf Alhamouri, Youssef Nafea, Aya El Aatar, Walid Al-Dhabyani, Emhemed S. Hamed, Sara Shatnawi, Fakhraddin Alwajih, Khalid Elkhidir, Ashwag Alasmari, Abdurrahman Gerrio, Omar Said Alshahri, AbdelRahim Elmadany, Ismail Berrada, Amir Azad Adil Al-kathiri, Fadi Zaraket, Mustafa Jarrar, Yahya Mohamed Elhadj, Hassan Alhuzali, and Muhammad Abdul-Mageed #ACL2026 #NLProc #ArabicNLP #MachineTranslation #LLMs #MultilingualNLP #ResponsibleAI #EfficientAI

Excited to share our presentation today, July 6, at ACL 2026 in San Diego! We will be presenting live at Panel C-98 in the Coronado Ballroom, Level 4. LQM: Linguistically Motivated Multidimensional Quality Metrics for Machine Translation Samar M. Magdy, Fakhraddin Alwajih, Abdellah El Mekki, Wesam El Sayed, Muhammad Abdul-Mageed aclanthology.org/2026.findin… 📷 Poster Session D 📷 9:00 AM Panel C-98, Coronado Ballroom in Level 4 📷 July 6, 2026 Looking forward to discussing linguistically grounded evaluation for machine translation and how we can move toward more efficient and diverse AI. #ACL2026 #NLProc #MachineTranslation #ArabicNLP #Evaluation #ResponsibleAI #EfficientAI

Excited to share our July 6 presentation at ACL 2026 in San Diego! We will be presenting: LQM: Linguistically Motivated Multidimensional Quality Metrics for Machine Translation Samar M. Magdy, Fakhraddin Alwajih, Abdellah El Mekki, Wesam El Sayed, Muhammad Abdul-Mageed aclanthology.org/2026.findin… 📍 Poster Session D 🕚 11:00 AM 📅 July 6, 2026 Looking forward to discussing linguistically grounded evaluation for machine translation and how we can move toward more efficient and diverse AI. #ACL2026 #NLProc #MachineTranslation #ArabicNLP #Evaluation #ResponsibleAI #EfficientAI

Join us tomorrow, July 5 for the following presentations at ACL 2026: LQM: Linguistically Motivated Multidimensional Quality Metrics for Machine Translation aclanthology.org/2026.findin… Distilling the Essence: Efficient Reasoning Distillation via Sequence Truncation aclanthology.org/2026.findin… Zero-Shot Context-Aware ASR for Diverse Arabic Varieties aclanthology.org/2026.findin… See you tomorrow at ACL 2026 in San Diego!

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