Rana Domian

Jordanian AI pioneer creating Arabic language tech solutions

Rana Domian (b.1985) is a Jordanian computer scientist whose company ArabicAI developed the first Arabic NLP engine for dialect recognition. Growing up in Amman's tech scene, she earned a PhD in computational linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University. Her breakthrough came in 2015 with the DialectBank project, mapping 20 Arabic dialects using machine learning. This work enabled voice assistants like Google Assistant to support Levantine and Gulf accents. Domian's 2020 TEDx talk How AI Can Help Preserve Language highlighted her efforts to document endangered Bedouin dialects. She co-founded Arabic Women in Tech, which has mentored 1,500+ young women. Her startup QuranicAI uses deep learning to analyze Quranic verse variations across centuries. Domian's team recently partnered with UNESCO on the Digital Heritage Project, digitizing ancient Arabic manuscripts using her proprietary OCR technology.