Ghena Alhanaee earned her PhD in Summer 2020 from the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on environmental sustainability, energy resources, water and food security, specifically in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. She has presented her work internationally, from North America to Europe to the Middle East, and in 2019, she received MIT's Innovators Under 35 award for the Middle East and North Africa region. Subsequently, in 2020, she received MIT's Innovators Under 35 Award for the global list.

Ghena received her MSc in Energy Resources Engineering from Stanford University, and her BSc in Mechanical Engineering from The Petroleum Institute in her hometown of Abu Dhabi, UAE.