Loading ...Pathbreakers of Arab America—Dina Katabi
By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
This is the eighty-sixth in Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series features personalities from various fields, including entertainment, business, sports, science, the arts, academia, journalism, and politics. Our eighty-sixth pathbreaker is Dina Katabi, a Syrian-born computer scientist, electrical engineer, and developer of practical applications of machine learning to the analysis of human body health. She was designated as one of the world’s most influential women engineers by Forbes Magazine.
Dina Katabi, notable for pioneering work in linking computer science and electrical engineering to practical issues of medicine and human body health
Dina was born and raised in Damascus, Syria, the daughter of a family of doctors. (There is little available data on her early life.) She was initially set to follow in their footsteps, heading off to medical school. However, after enrolling in university, Dina discovered a passion for computer science and the possibilities it held for creating innovative systems that combined medicine and technology. Katabi went on to earn her Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Damascus University in 1995, followed by an MS in computer science and a PhD in computer systems, networking, and telecommunications from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999 and 2003, respectively.
In 2003, Katabi joined MIT, where she holds the title of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is the director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing and a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Dina also leads the Networks at MIT group (NETMIT) and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Katabi’s unique approach to her work is highly innovative, according to an American University of Beirut Bulletin: her approach “to wireless networks bridges disciplines, encompassing everything from the signal to the application. Her research has led to solutions for a range of networking issues, including protocols, minimizing congestion in high-bandwidth networks, and algorithms for spectrum analysis.” In effect, Katabi came up with novel ways to prevent congestion in wireless networks, making things like Wi-Fi and cellular service faster and more efficient.”
Later in her career, Katabi turned her focus from how wireless signals carry data to practical issues of human health. Perhaps this focus reflected her parents’ practice of medicine in Syria. Specifically, she used wireless signals for extracting information from the way they bounce off people’s bodies. In 2016, Katabi co-founded Emerald Innovations, an MIT spin-off focused on non-invasive health monitoring. She and her team developed “the world’s first Wi-Fi-like box that analyzes surrounding radio signals using neural networks to infer people’s movements, breathing, heart rate, falls, sleep apnea, and sleep stages – all in a touchless manner without requiring users to wear any sensors.”
Katabi and her team’s approach, more specifically, uses machine learning and signals to analyze the human body. Based on how Radio Frequency electronic wave signals are directed to bounce off our bodies, researchers could measure human breathing, heart rates, emotion, and sleep stages, without having the patient wear any sensor.
The MIT firm, Emerald, based on Dina’s and her team’s work, then provides continuous health data and predictive analyses to doctors, researchers, and pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Katabi and her team of researchers at MIT have also developed an artificial intelligence system that can diagnose Parkinson’s disease and assess its severity by examining a patient’s nightly breathing patterns. It can also be used to detect subtle changes in Alzheimer’s patients, for example, and monitor some effects of their medications
According to Katabi, “the hallmark of her work is bridging disciplines, and her approach to wireless networks is unique in that it goes all the way from the signal to the application.” That’s where the link between her electrical engineering and computer science background dovetails with the applied field of medical technology. As Dina herself says, “It’s not the traditional way people think about a field.”
Dina’s practical application of her work has brought critical acclaim and honors to her and her team. In 2013, she won a MacArthur “genius grant,” as well as the Grace Murray Hopper Award, recognizing her as the outstanding young computer science professional. In 2014, on the celebration of Project Mac’s 50th anniversary, Katabi’s work on X-ray vision was chosen as one of the “50 ways that MIT has transformed computer science.” In 2015, Katabi presented her startup idea to President Obama at the White House Demo Day.
There’s more: In 2017, Dina was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to network congestion control and to wireless communications. In 2022, Katabi was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And, finally, in 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the American University of Beirut for her significant contribution to research and innovation in wireless networks.
With her pioneering work, according to the American University in Beirut Bulletin, “Katabi has cemented her place as a leading figure in the field of computer science and an inspiration to future generations of researchers and scientists.” Well done, indeed!
Dina’s ties to her Arab World…strong and abiding
While there is little information available on Katabi’s views on Arab World issues, she has a strong feeling of sentimentality towards her part of the World. In a 2013 interview with The New York Times, Dina revealed some of her feelings about her Arab background. Here, we will present those parts of the interview relevant to Dina’s Arabness:
First, noting Dina’s credentials, which in 2013 were already touched with gold, the Times article asked about some of her daily schedule.
On Reading: Every day I open my eyes and before leaving my bed, I pull in my laptop and check the news on Syria, in the hope that some miracle has happened during the night. I particularly read the local Syrian news because they report the Arabic names of places where explosions and attacks occur. I check that none of them happened next to my family home or that of close friends.
For books, there’s a very famous author, Tawfiq al-Hakim. His book “El Sultan El-Ha’er” — “The Sultan’s Dilemma” — was written around 1960, but I find it to be still relevant, particularly given the power struggle going on in the Middle East. He is very good at abstraction, which is exactly what we do as engineers and mathematicians. We want to abstract something that is very complex and put it in simple terms so we can think about it very deeply. His stories may seem simple, but they have a deeper meaning.
On listening, Dina shows an eclectic taste: My friends say that my music taste got stuck in the ’70s. I really like Queen and Freddie Mercury. I also like old French songs by Dalida and Joe Dassin. When it comes to Arabic songs, I listen to Fairuz, the best ever Lebanese singer.
Regarding what Dina watches, she says she doesn’t have a TV at home. Most of the movies and shows I watch are streamed online. I recently saw an Egyptian movie, “Hena Maysara,” which means “Waiting for Better Times.” The movie is by a famous Egyptian director called Khaled Youssef. It’s before the revolution and is about how the very poor people live and how the process of making a person a terrorist starts. It’s often just a normal person who is just trying to find a life and find a future.
Given all Katabi’s professional interests and commitments, it is amazing she has any time for ‘rest and recreation.’ And, while not having become a medical doctor following in her parents’ footsteps, Dina has otherwise made an incredible impact on medical science, theoretical and practical.
Sources:
“Dina Katabi,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans 2025
“Dina Katabi,” American University of Beirut bulletin, 11/19/2024
“Dina Katabi, SM ’99, PhD ’03,” MIT Technology Review 8/21/2019
“Dina Katabi,” New York Times Opinion, 10/19/2013
John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. HJohn Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.
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