Badis Ydri-currently a professor of theoretical particle physics, teaching at the Institute of Physics, Badji Mokhtar Annaba University, Algeria-received his PhD from Syracuse University, New York, USA and in 2011 his Habilitation from Annaba University, Annaba, Algeria. Professor Ydri is also a research associate at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, Ireland, and a regular ICTP associate at the Abdus Salam Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. His post-doctoral experience comprises a Marie Curie fellowship at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, and a Hamilton fellowship at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Ireland. His current research directions include: the gauge/gravity duality; the renormalization group method in matrix and noncommutative field theories; non-commutative and matrix field theory; quantum gravity as emergent geometry, emergent gravity and emergent cosmology