Alfaris is currently the President of the Saudi National Labs and National Science Agency, namely the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology(KACST). Alfaris is also the Chair of Science 20 Saudi Arabia in the G20 Presidency in 2020.

Alfaris has also been responsible for the formulation of the National Saudi Research and Development strategies. In that capacity, he has been the lead for the National Transformation Program (NTP) R&D agenda and later lead the design of the Research Development and Innovation Initiatives as well as the Industry 4.0 Initiatives as part of the National Industrial Development and Logistics Program (NIDLP). Alfaris is also a member of several national and international boards including the Global Research Council.  

Alfaris is also affiliated with MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS). Alfaris’ research experience spans several fields including Big data analytics, Strategic Engineering, Systems Architecture & Engineering, Integrated Modeling and Simulation, Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimization as well as Decision Support Systems. His current research focuses on the development of Integrated Simulations for the planning of Smart Cities and large scale complex urban and Infrastructure systems.

Alfaris received his training in several disciplines including civil architecture, engineering and computer science. He received from MIT a Master of Science from the Center of Computational Engineering at the School of Engineering while completing his Ph.D. in Design Computation.