Areej Alokaili

Assistant Professor and AI Consultant with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Sheffield and 10+ years of experience in AI, NLP, and data-driven systems. Recently served as an AI Consultant at the Saudi Data AI Authority (SDAIA) on the ALLAM Arabic Large Language Model project, leading the SFT data unit, managing large-scale AI data operations, and coordinating cross-functional contributors. Experienced in data quality, AI data pipelines, LLM evaluation, and translating technical insights into practical data and model improvement priorities.

AI Consultant at Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) (2024-01 – Present)

• Member of the post-training team for ALLAM, Saudi Arabia's national Arabic Large Language Model.
• Led the SFT data unit, building it from setup into an operational team with clear workflows, quality controls, and reporting.
• Managed 20+ annotators and 40+ domain experts to produce and evaluate human-created SFT datasets.
• Led the delivery of 800K+ high-quality SFT samples.
• Standardized SFT data quality through guidelines and workshops for annotators, domain experts, and external contributors.
• Developed pipelines to process, track, validate, and assess continuous SFT data streams from multiple sources.
• Produced LLM evaluation and benchmarking reports to identify gaps and guide data and model improvements.
• Advised on LLM operations platforms and defined requirements for internal AI data systems.

Acting Vice-Chair at Information Systems Department, King Saud University (KSU) (2023-01 – 2024-12)

• Managed departmental operations across faculty affairs, student issues, and policy implementation.
• Oversaw accreditation, quality assurance, and compliance activities.
• Supported staff development planning and proactively addressed academic and operational risks.

Assistant Professor at Information Systems Department, King Saud University (KSU) (2021-01 – Present)

• Designed and delivered Information Systems courses, translating complex technical concepts for diverse student audiences.
• Supervised award-winning graduation projects from requirements analysis to delivery.
• Published and presented research at international venues including AACL, EMNLP and SIGIR.

Teaching Assistant at University of Sheffield (2018-01 – 2020-12)

• Delivered tutorials and labs for graduate courses in Mathematical Foundations for Computer Science and Python Programming.

Ph.D. in Computer Science – The University of Sheffield (2017-01 – 2021-12)

MSc in Computer Science – King Saud University (2011-01 – 2014-12)

BSc in Information Technology – King Saud University (2006-01 – 2010-12)