Dr Muhammad Usman

Profile

Biography

Dr Usman received MS (Computer Science) degree with specialisation in Cyber Security, with first class. He completed his PhD from the School of ICT (Cyber Security), Griffith University, Australia. He was Postdoc (Research Fellow) in Cyber Security and Machine Learning, University of Surrey, UK.

Dr Usman has 21 years of all-round academic and industry experience. He has worked in different continents of the world: Australia, Asia and Europe and have developed an extensive network of research and academic collaborators from across the globe. His experience is evident from his diverse set of industry (Network and Hardware Engineer and System Administrator), academic (Instructor, Lecturer, Assistant Professor (Computer Science), Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security and Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security & Forensics), research (Research Fellow/ Postdoc) and managerial positions (project manager).

He provides advisory and consultancy in multiple areas such as higher education; curriculum design & development; cyber security, digital forensics; research and development; and career professional development trainings. He has been a member of COVID 19 Outbreak Expert Database of UK Parliament and has provided advisory services to Govt. of Pakistan.

Dr Usman is currently leading a research group: Human-Centred Intelligent and Secure Systems. His current research interests include interdisciplinary areas around cyber security, digital forensics; trust & privacy; AI-driven complex systems; human-centred systems; digital twins; Agritech; Healthtech; community tech; consumer electronics; drones, electrical and autonomous vehicles; and formal and statistical modelling. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 published research articles and a book. A significatn proportion of his research articles has appeared in top venues such as in numerous IEEE Transactions, IEEE IOT Journal, ACM Computing Surveys, Elsevier Computer Networks, several Q1 journals, and a prestigious conference: Local Computer Networks. One of his research papers has received the best paper award in the conference IEEE ComTech 2017.

Dr. Usman has been recipient of several research fundings. Notably he has led both Transnational Curricula for Digital Forensics (2023 -2024) and Going Global Partnership PAK-UK Education Gateway Mobility Partnership for Faculty (2023 -2024) as Principal Applicant (PI), funded by British Council. He has also led Design and Analysis of Web Services Ranking Methods for Internet of Things (2017-2018), as PI, funded by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. He has been Co-l of the project: Framework for AI-enabled Drone Forensics Analysis (2023-2024), funded by NAUSS Saudi Arabia. He also co-led three projects: (i) Code Vulnerability Scanning for Java Language; (ii) Code Vulnerability Scanning for C Language and (iii) Data Leak Prevention (2017-2018), funded by an overseas public sector organisation.

Dr Usman has growing strong international research reputation which is evident from several indicators such as continued to be invited for keynote talks in conferences and talk series; guest editorial roles; editorial membership of a journal; general/ co-general chair of international colloquiums and symposiums; steering committee memberships; member technical programme committees; session chair; PhD viva chair; grant reviewer (UKRI, EPSRC, British Council); examiner for PhD theses; leading a faculty delegate from different universities of the UK to Pakistan on faculty exchange programme; General Chair of Hackathon; elected as a member of Security and Privacy of CE Hardware and Software Systems (SPC) Technical Committee (TC) by IEEE CTSoc Consumer Technology Society; and a reviewer for esteemed journals. He has served in different leading capacities, such as a focal person, publication Chair, organising committee member and/or TPC member of several IEEE conferences.

He is Programme Leader for BSc (Hons) Computing (Networks, Cyber Security and Forensics) . He is also a member of Computer Science Teachers Association, endorsed by Association for Computing Machinery, USA. He is a Juniper certified networking and security specialist, and member of IEEE and BCS.