Dr. Ali Safaa Sadiq

Ali Safaa Sadiq (Ali) is an Associate Professor in Cybersecurity and the research leader of the Cyber Security Research Group in the Department of Computer Science at Nottingham Trent University. Ali is also a senior IEEE member, an adjunct staff member at Monash University, and an honorary Associate Professor at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimisation, Torrens University Australia.

Ali has served as a Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Networks at the University of Wolverhampton and as a Lecturer at the School of Information Technology, Monash University, Malaysia. Previously, he was also a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Systems & Networking, Faculty of Computer Systems & Software Engineering, University Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia.

Ali completed his first degree in Computer Science in 2004. After that, he gained five years of industrial experience in Computer Science and Networking. He later pursued his MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science, completing them in 2011 and 2014, respectively. Ali was awarded the Pro-Chancellor Academic Award as the best student in his batch for both his master’s and PhD.

He has published several scientific and research papers in well-known international journals and conferences. Ali has been involved in over 10 research grant projects. Recently, with the CSRG team, he secured approximately £5 million in research funding for cybersecurity innovation and development, including projects for the UK national Power Grid supplier, OFGEM.

Ali has also been a co-investigator on the CYBERMIND research project, which received £91,000 in funding from the Innovate UK Cyber Academic Start-up Accelerator 2020. Additionally, he led (as Principal Investigator) a funded research project called TrustMe, which aims to help AI developers and data scientists add security, trust, and explainability to AI-based decisions. The first phase of TrustMe was funded with £31,338, while the second phase received over £60,000 to develop the proof of concept.

As part of his research impact, Ali developed a commercialized platform called TYMLO and launched TYMLO Technology Ltd. He was also involved in the SOLVD project, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), which supported local SME companies in cybersecurity.

Ali has supervised over 10 PhD students, 30 master’s students, and multiple undergraduate final-year projects. He is currently working on funded projects, including:

• Drive with Confidence: A Safe and Secure Driving System to Mitigate Remote Vehicle Hijacking Risks
• PRAVE: PRoactive Authentication and Verification Embedded Model for Critical Cyber-Physical Systems

Both projects have received a total funding of approximately £130,000. His current research interests include Cybersecurity, Wireless Communications, and AI applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Internet of Vehicles (IoV).