I was born in Rama, a small town in the Upper Galilee region of Israel. I am a citizen of Israel, of Palestinian origin and Arab ethnicity. To get an idea about the situation in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, check out If Americans Knew. The extended Nakhleh family is Roman Catholic, yet I am agnostic by choice. My wife is Japanese, and we have a daughter, Brooke Amal Nakhleh (born January 25, 2006) and a son Dylan Karim Nakhleh (born October 15, 2008). I am a permanent resident of the United States of America.

I received the B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 1996. Immediately after that, I taught for one year in the high school of my town, before leaving for the United States in July 1997 to pursue my graduate studies. I received the M.CS. degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1998. I joined the Ph.D. program in Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin in January 1999. After working for two years on research in Formal Verification (particularly Model Checking), I joined the research group of Tandy Warnow and received the Ph.D. degree under her supervision in May 2004. My dissertation is titled Phylogenetic Networks, and won the Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award from the University of Texas at Austin as well as the Bert Kay Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Department of Computer Sciences.

For my teaching and research interests, please visit the Teaching and Research pages. For an up-to-date CV, click here.