Saad received his B.S. degree in mathematics from University of Algiers, Algeria in 1970. He then joined University of Grenoble for the doctoral program and obtained a junior doctorate, 'Doctorat de troisieme cycle' in 1974 and a higher doctorate, 'Doctorat d’Etat' in 1983. During the course of his academic career he has held various positions, including Research Scientist in the Computer Science Department at Yale University (1981—1983), Associate Professor in the University of Tizi-Ouzou in Algeria (1983—1984), Research Scientist in the Computer Science Department at Yale University (1984—1986), and Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1986—1988). He also worked as a Senior Scientist in the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) during 1980—1990.

Saad joined University of Minnesota as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science in 1990. At Minnesota, he held the position of Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering between January 1997 and June 2000. Currently, he is the I. T. Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at University of Minnesota.

Saad is the author of a couple of influential books in linear algebra and matrix computation which include

• Numerical Methods for Large Eigenvalue Problems, Halstead Press, 1992.
• Iterative Methods for Sparse Linear Systems, 2nd ed., Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelpha, 2003.

He has also co-edited the following conference proceedings:

• A. Ferreira, J. Rolim, Y. Saad, and T. Yang, Parallel Algorithms for Irregularly Structured Problems, Proceedings of Third International Workshop, IRREGULAR’96 Santa Barbara, CA USA, 1996. Lecture notes in Computer Science, No 1117. Springer Verlag, 1996.
• D. E. Keyes, Y. Saad, and D. G. Truhlar, Domain-Based Parallelism and Problem Decomposition Methods in Computational Science and Engineering. SIAM, Philadelphia, 1995.
• D. L. Boley, D. G. Truhlar, Y. Saad, R. E. Wyatt, and L. E. Collins, Practical Iterative Methods for Large Scale Computations. North Holland, Amsterdam, 1989.