The Human Foundation (HF) is a pioneer organization in Egypt, focusing on building inner peace, openness, and human compassion, believing that the betterment of life starts by unfolding within human hearts their interconnection with life as manifested in all beings. The awareness of the oneness of life and the oneness of humanity are basis for bringing the world together to face human and natural crisis. The Human Foundation is an umbrella for projects that serve its vision and mission. It respects and encourages scientific research and welcomes forums and conferences that bring science to serve humane endeavors.
General Outlook
Awakening humankind’s consciousness to their deep interconnection opens a new perspective to bring people together in harmony, albeit with different cultures, religions, races, colors, gender, and other variations. Beyond all these diversities, human beings have a meeting point within their existence. All people share being human and seek self-realization. The awareness of our shared human foundation paves the way towards peace and plants the seed of a new world.
Mission
We work to foster human values that cherish freedom, maintain equality and justice, respect diversities, cultivate gender balance, and secure human rights. We are guided by the belief that such values are intrinsically related to the fulfillment of human potential.
Vision
A Society where citizens have equal opportunities to bring forth their human potential, by contributing positively to their human and natural environments.
Our Board of Trustees
Prof. Dr. Aliaa Rafea — Chairman
Chair Dr. Aliaa is a professor of Anthropology at Ain Shams University, Women’s College. She makes use of anthropological perspectives for understanding issues related to religion, politics and culture. Professor Rafea wrote book chapters that were published in India, Japan, Morocco, Canada, and USA, as well as numerous academic articles. She authored and co-authored several books, among which is “The Root of All Evil: An Exposition to Prejudice,Fundamentalism and Gender Bias” (2007). She shared in editing and wrote a chapter in “A Force Such as the World has Never Known: Women Changing the World” (2013). She worked as an expert for an Arab League Project that aimed at empowering Arab Youth. She is active in several Egyptian NGOs,,and is a member in the Egyptian Women Writers Association, as well as the Egyptian Philosophical Society. She is a co – founder of the women’s group at the Egyptian Society for Spiritual and Cultural Research. She was the Secretary General of Zenab Kamel Hassan Foundation for Holistic Human Development(ZKH). Prof.Rafea wrote many opinion pieces in Egyptian newspapers; and she wrote regularly for Nahdet Misr Newspaper. In 2002 Prof. Rafea was a visiting professor at Randolph-Macon Women College, where she lectured on “Islam in the modern world” and “The universal meaning of the Egyptian civilization”. Professor Rafea is a fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology(SFA), a member at the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the International Leadership Association (ILA). She joined the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW) in 2011, and traveled with them to different parts of the world. She joined the Spirit of Humanity Forum gathering in Iceland in April 2014
Prof. Dr. Adel El-Beltagy
Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University. Chairman of the International Commission for the Development of Dry Lands (IDDC). Scientific Research Honorary Member of the Scientific Council of the Ijan Agricultural Academy
Prof. Dr. Adel El-Beltagy has held many leadership positions locally and internationally: he was the President of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR) (2006-2011), and he remained the Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Lands (ICARDA) for eleven years (1995-2006). He also held the position of Director General and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Agricultural Research Center in Egypt, and before that he was the First Undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. Dr. Adel El-Beltagy has received many local and international awards in recognition of his distinguished contributions to scientific research and his international activities
He was awarded the State Appreciation Prize in Science (2008) and the Medal of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos of the first degree for Science and Culture in the year (2008), the Gold Medal for his contributions in the field of agriculture – the Republic of Armenia (2006), and the Medal of Independence from His Majesty King Abdullah II Bin Al Hussein, Monarch The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 2005, the Medal of Honor from the Desert and Sahel Observatory (France) in the year (2003), the Silver Medal from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in recognition of his outstanding efforts and support in the areas of biological diversity, sustainable development of natural resources and agricultural development (1993), golden pen of the International Society of Horticultural Sciences (1982)
Prof. Dr. Fathi Saleh
Founder and Honorary Director of the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) in Egypt.
Member of the Supreme Council of Culture, and also Chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in the Mediterranean Countries.
Prof. Dr. Fathy is very interested in the study of the history and development of humanity spiritually and has an insight into the direct effects of space, time and cultural heritage on the mental, emotional and psychological state of people in different places.
In addition, the in-depth study of astronomy has attracted special attention from Prof. Dr. Fathy, stemming from his realization that a comprehensive vision of human life cannot be complete without taking into account all cosmic relationships.
Prof. Dr. Fathy Saleh is currently a Professor of Computer Engineering at Cairo University and served as the Cultural Advisor Center for Egypt in France from 1995 to 1997, and then became Egypt's Ambassador to UNESCO.
He won the first place from the Arab Towns Organization Award for Information Technology in Doha in 2010.
Dr. Mohammed El-Beltagy
Dr. Mohammed El-Beltagy is a pioneering expert in artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimization, and computational modeling who has consistently driven innovation across startups and established enterprises.
As Founder of Optomatica, a deep-tech software consulting firm specializing in AI, machine learning, and optimization solutions, he continues to shape cutting-edge technological advancements. His entrepreneurial vision has led to co-founding multiple successful ventures, including Hive Streaming (where he served as Chief Innovation Officer), RaceFox (as CTO), Aim Technologies, Racemate, Optofolio, and Flend
His corporate governance experience includes serving on the boards of EFG Finance, Camel Ventures, and DFin, where he provides strategic technological guidance.
Dr. El-Beltagy earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southampton, UK, developing optimization methodologies that directly contributed to the design of the Airbus A380. As Senior Scientist at Bios Group, Inc. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he spearheaded operational optimization projects for multiple Fortune 50 companies.
His academic contributions include serving as a professor at Cairo University for over thirteen years, focusing on Artificial Intelligence, Game Theory, and Optimization. He currently teaches an undergraduate course on applied Generative AI at New Giza University and has taught graduate-level Artificial Intelligence at Nile University.
A prolific innovator, Dr. El-Beltagy holds 15 international patents and has co-authored dozens of publications on optimization, modeling, and algorithmic advancement.
Eng. Ramez Saleh
Eng. Ramez Saleh is an architect specializing in the design of museums, theaters, and cultural centers, and serves as treasurer of the Human Foundation.
He is the founder of Mountarchitects (2015), established after twenty years of international experience, and previously served as Design Director and Head of Architecture at PACER Consultants, with earlier roles at Progressive Architects, Ellerbe Becket (USA), and Betecs Scenography (Versailles, France).
He has worked as an independent consultant for international firms including Cultural Innovations (UK), LVDA (France), and the National Geographic Society (USA).
Eng. Ramez holds an MSc in Architecture from Belleville, Paris (1996) and a BSc in Engineering from Cairo University (1994), and is a Certified Consultant in Cultural Buildings with the Egyptian Syndicate of Engineers (2016).
His work has won first place in multiple architectural competitions, including the new headquarters of the Ministry of Tourism (2009), the Ministry of Housing's youth housing design (2011), the Almaza Avenue residential compound (2016), and the GLC Museum in Cairo (2018).
Prof. Dr. Samhaa El-Beltagy
Prof. Dr. Samhaa El-Beltagy is a leading expert in artificial intelligence and Arabic natural language processing, currently serving as Chief AI Officer at Nawy, where she leads the company's AI strategy and innovation.
She was the founding Dean of the School of Information Technology at New Giza University (2020–2025), and previously a Professor at Nile University, where she directed the Center for Informatics Science and led the Computer Science program.
Dr. El-Beltagy earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southampton, UK, where her doctoral work received the ACM SIGWEB Douglas Engelbart Best Paper Award for "Linking in Context".
Her research groups have an exceptional record in international AI competitions: at SemEval 2017 alone they fielded the top-performing systems in three tasks — message polarity classification, topic-based sentiment classification, and rumour veracity determination. Her supervised teams went on to win a Kaggle Silver Medal (top 4% in TensorFlow 2.0 Question Answering) and the top system for Arabic propaganda detection at WANLP 2022.
Her publications have received multiple honors, including the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Innovations and Information Technology (2013) for "Open Issues in the Sentiment Analysis of Arabic Social Media" and the 3rd Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing (2015) for "Building Large Arabic Multi-domain Resources for Sentiment Analysis". She also received Cairo University's Recognition Award for Outstanding Achievements (2010).
She has been named among the Top 30 Arab Experts in AI by MIT Technology Review and listed among the world's top 2% of scientists in the Stanford University global ranking in both 2019 and 2021.
Mr. Mostafa El-Beltagy
Mr. Mostafa El-Beltagy is a veteran marketing and commercial executive, currently serving as Co-Founder and CEO of Nawy, Egypt's leading digital real-estate platform.
His entrepreneurial track record began in 2010 when he co-founded Bey2ollak, the award-winning crowd-sourced traffic exchange application and Endeavor Egypt company, together with Aly Rafea.
He spent over twelve years at Vodafone, holding consumer-centric and strategy roles across Egypt, South Africa, Europe, and Romania, and concluding his tenure as Chief Commercial Officer of Vodafone Romania, where he led the company's integration and operations-merging process.
Mr. El-Beltagy holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the American University in Cairo, and writes and speaks on applying startup mentality to corporate new ventures.