Omani Student's AI Ranks in World's Top 13 at London Forum

An Omani computer science student has put the Sultanate's homegrown AI talent on a global stage. Ayah bint Hamid Al Kendi, a second-year student at Gulf College specialising in artificial intelligence, has seen her financial-crime detection tool, known as Sentinel in English and Haris ("the guard") in Arabic, selected as one of only 13 projects worldwide invited to deliver a special pitch at the 67th London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF).

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Ayah Al Kindi's AI project, Sentinel/Haris, was chosen by Oman's Research and Innovation Authority (RIA) to represent the Sultanate at LIYSF 2026 after a national screening of 738 STEM submissions.
• At the London forum, held from 19 July to 1 August 2026, Al Kindi presented at the Science Bazaar and was then named one of just 13 projects worldwide invited to deliver a special three-minute pitch, the only Omani entry on that shortlist.
• Her system uses behavioural fingerprinting, graph neural networks and federated learning to flag money-laundering patterns without raw customer data ever leaving a bank's own servers.
• Oman Observer published Al Kindi's first detailed account of the London trip, including a meeting with Oman's Ambassador to the UK, on 21 August 2026.
• The achievement highlights RIA's role in building a talent pipeline for Oman's Vision 2040 push into AI and fintech.

🛡️ From a Muscat classroom to London's Science Bazaar

The story began months earlier, when RIA ran its national call for student STEM projects. As Times of Oman reported, the authority evaluated 738 projects submitted from across the country, narrowed the field to 30 finalists, and then convened a judging panel drawn from RIA, the University of Nizwa and the Military Technological College to pick the nine projects that would carry Oman's flag at LIYSF. Al Kindi's anti-money-laundering platform, listed in that coverage as "Al Harees (The Guardian)" and elsewhere as Haris, made the final cut, as confirmed by Muscat Daily's report on the selection.

The 67th LIYSF ran in London from 19 July to 1 August 2026, and Oman sent a delegation of ten students under RIA's supervision, according to an Oman Observer feature published on 21 August 2026. Over the two weeks that followed, Al Kindi presented Sentinel at the forum's Science Bazaar before being selected as one of just 13 projects worldwide invited to deliver a special three-minute pitch, the only Omani project to receive that invitation, the same feature reported.

🤖 What Sentinel actually does

Sentinel is not a simple rules-based fraud filter. According to Muscat Daily's earlier report on the project, the system combines behavioural fingerprinting, graph neural networks and federated learning to detect financial crime while protecting customer privacy. Al Kindi explained the privacy design directly: "Raw customer data never leaves the bank's infrastructure. Only the mathematical insights generated by the AI model are shared."

In practice, that means a bank could run Sentinel's models locally on its own transaction data, only sharing the trained insights rather than the underlying customer records, an approach that speaks directly to the data-residency and privacy concerns Omani banks and regulators have flagged as they digitise. It is also the kind of applied fintech research that connects to a broader story about how Oman's financial sector increasingly depends on homegrown skills, a theme explored in Oman Vision 2040's coverage of Omani talent in banking.

🌍 A pipeline, not a one-off

Al Kindi's trip also included a meeting with Oman's Ambassador to the UK, a detail the Oman Observer feature framed as part of a wider effort to connect young Omani researchers with the country's diplomatic and institutional network abroad. Her success follows a pattern this year of Omani students and startups pushing AI research and talent development into international view, from Otech's new AI-driven talent platform built with the Omani startup Remedy to university-led AI projects piloting outside the Sultanate entirely.

RIA's screening pipeline, taking 738 national submissions down to nine LIYSF finalists through a panel spanning RIA, the University of Nizwa and the Military Technological College, is itself a data point worth watching. It suggests Oman now has a repeatable, institutionalised process for surfacing individual student research and giving it an international audience, rather than relying on one-off competition wins.

🚀 Why this matters for Oman

Vision 2040 leans heavily on the idea that Oman's future competitiveness rests on human capital, not just capital investment. A single student building a working anti-money-laundering AI system, using techniques as current as graph neural networks and federated learning, and then having that work recognised among 13 projects worldwide, is concrete evidence that Oman's AI talent pipeline is producing internationally competitive researchers, not just consumers of imported technology. For an economy trying to build a domestic AI and fintech sector, stories like Al Kindi's are the kind of proof point that can influence where the next generation of Omani computer science students choose to specialise, and where local banks and regulators look first when they need homegrown expertise in financial crime detection.