Mahmoud Elish

Dr. Mahmoud Elish joined Florida Polytechnic University in January 2025 as a professor of computer science. Before joining Florida Poly, he was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at the University of West Florida. Prior to that, he was a professor and the head of the Computer Science Department at Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, where he also held the position of interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Earlier in his career, Elish was an associate professor of software engineering in the Information and Computer Science Department at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia. During the summer of 2016, he was a faculty research fellow in the Computer Science Department at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

His research focuses on the intersection of software engineering and computational intelligence. He was recognized as one of the world’s top 2% of scientists in 2024 by Stanford University. He has published over 50 articles in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. Elish’s research has garnered more than 1,800 citations, with a current h-index of 19 on Google Scholar. He has also served as the principal investigator and co-principal investigator on several funded research projects.

In addition to his academic contributions, Elish is actively involved in accreditation and editorial activities. He is an ABET program evaluator (EAC and CAC), and an associate editor for IEEE Access. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Awards and Honors

• World’s top 2% of scientists, Stanford University, 2024.
• Mentor, first-place winner of Dell Technologies Graduation Project Competition for Middle East, Russia, Africa and Turkey, 2021.

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, George Mason University, 2005
• M.S. in Computer Science, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, 1999
• B.S. in Computer Science, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, 1997

Expertise

• Software engineering
• Software metrics
• Software quality and security
• Software maintenance and evolution
• Applied machine learning

Professional Activities

• ABET program evaluator, CAC and EAC
• Associate editor for IEEE Access
• IEEE senior member

Select Publications

• K. Elish, M. Elish and H. Almohri, “Lightweight, Effective Detection and Characterization of Mobile Malware Families.” IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 2982-2995, 2022.
• M. Alkandari, A. Kelkawi and M. Elish, “An Empirical Investigation on the Effect of Code Smells on Resource Usage of Android Mobile Applications,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 61853-61863, 2021.
• M. Elish, “Enhanced Prediction of Vulnerable Web Components Using Stochastic Gradient Boosting Trees,” International Journal of Web Information Systems, Emerald, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 201-214, 2019.
• M. Elish and M. Mohammed, “Quantitative Analysis of Fault Density in Design Patterns: An Empirical Study,” Information and Software Technology, Elsevier, vol. 66, pp. 58-72, 2015.
• M. Elish, H. Aljamaan and I. Ahmad, “Three Empirical Studies on Predicting Software Maintainability using Ensemble Methods,” Soft Computing, Springer, vol. 19, no. 9, pp. 2511-2524, 2015.