An international, human-centered team.

Director & co-investigator network

Led from Kamloops with long-standing research partners across seven countries — joint publications, patents, grants, and student supervision.

Founding Director · TRU · Canada

Dr. Ghazanfar Latif

Assistant Professor, Computing Science, Thompson Rivers University. World's Top 2% Scientists (2024, 2025); 14 US patents; IEEE Senior Member; President, AAIFS; Lead, TRU HorAIzon AI for Health & Healing. Full profile →

USA

Dr. Jaafar Alghazo

Associate Professor, Software Engineering & IT Management, University of Minnesota Crookston (formerly Virginia Military Institute; founding Dean, PMU College of Computer Engineering & Science). Ph.D., Southern Illinois University. Machine learning, medical image processing, and assistive technology — co-author on 60+ joint works and co-editor of the ICICET proceedings. Profile

Saudi Arabia

Dr. Ghassen Ben Brahim

Dean, College of Computer Engineering & Sciences, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University. Ph.D., Western Michigan University; former Systems Analyst at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems and research visitor at the US Naval Research Lab. Machine learning, network security, and QoS routing — co-inventor on multiple AIRL-affiliated patents. Profile

Pakistan

Prof. Arfan Jaffar

Professor and Dean, Superior University (Gold Campus), Lahore. Ph.D., FAST-NUCES; former Research Professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology, Korea. Image processing and computational intelligence; joint PhD supervision on breast-cancer histopathology and federated-learning healthcare research. Profile

Australia

Dr. Nazeeruddin Mohammad

Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Adelaide (formerly Director, Cybersecurity Center, PMU). Ph.D., University of Ulster; past researcher at Cisco Systems. Cybersecurity, IoT, and network protocols — co-inventor across the nine-patent writer-verification and document-forensics family. Profile

Malaysia

A/P Dr. D.N.F. Awang Iskandar

Associate Professor, Faculty of Computer Science & IT, UNIMAS. Ph.D., RMIT Australia; postdoctoral research at Heriot-Watt (EU CUBIST project) and Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Manchester. Spatio-temporal image analysis and semantics in medicine, agriculture and astronomy — PhD supervision partner for AIRL's medical and surveillance AI lines. Profile

TRU · Canada

Dr. Saira Bano

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Thompson Rivers University. Co-investigator on the governance of AI-generated disinformation in Canada's defence and security sector, bringing international-security and policy expertise to AIRL's sociotechnical research.

India

Prof. R. Maheswar

Professor and Associate Director, KPR Institute of Engineering & Technology, Coimbatore. Ph.D. in Wireless Sensor Networks, Anna University. WSNs, queueing theory and performance evaluation — collaborator on IoT, smart-systems, and agricultural-drone research. Profile

Saudi Arabia

Dr. Abul Bashar

Associate Professor, College of Computer Engineering & Sciences, PMU. Ph.D., University of Ulster; Osmania University Engineering Gold Medalist. Machine learning for networks and health — co-author on COVID-19 diagnostics, malicious-PDF detection, and federated-learning IoMT research. Profile

Saudi Arabia

Dr. Khaled Fawagreh

Lecturer in Information Technology, PMU. Ph.D., Robert Gordon University, UK; M.Sc. Dalhousie and B.Sc. York University, Canada. Data mining and machine learning — collaborator on education analytics and AI-text detection. Profile

France / Lebanon

Roxane Mallouhy

Faculty member, PMU, and Ph.D. scholar at FEMTO-ST, Besançon, France, researching AI time-series forecasting. Telecommunications engineering (Antonine University) and mobile & distributed computing (Université de Franche-Comté) — co-author on agriculture-AI research. Profile

Saudi Arabia

Dr. Mohsin Butt

Program Coordinator, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals. Completed his Ph.D. (2025, UNIMAS) on deep learning for diabetic retinopathy under AIRL-affiliated co-supervision. Image and video processing, compression, and parallel computing — co-author on MEDCnet and multiple medical-imaging works. Profile

Saudi Arabia

Zafar Kazmi

Lecturer & Cisco instructor, PMU, and Ph.D. candidate at UNIMAS researching smart-city robbery detection with transformer-based surveillance AI. M.Sc. Internet Engineering (UK). Internet security, biometrics, and e-commerce security. Profile

Saudi Arabia

Mohammed Zikria

Lab Instructor, College of Computer Engineering & Science, PMU (MCA, BCA). Web technologies, programming languages, and internet security — co-author on maritime ship detection and accessible e-learning research. Profile

PhD students (6 supervised / co-supervised)

• Rifat Saeed — Wildfire & Air Quality Prediction using Quantum-Inspired Machine Learning (UNIMAS, 2026–2029)
• Muhammad Zain — Transformer-based Hate-Speech Detection for English & Low-Resource Languages (IPN Mexico, 2025–2028)
• Irum Nehvi — Automatic Blood-Cancer Detection from Microscopic Images using Deep Learning (UNIMAS, 2025–2027)
• Faizan Ahmad — Cross-Attention CNN & Vision Transformers for Breast Histopathology (Superior University, 2022–2026)
• Zafar Kazmi — Advanced Surveillance for Robbery Detection in Smart Cities (UNIMAS, 2024–2027)
• Mohsin Butt — Diabetic Retinopathy Detection using Deep Learning (UNIMAS, completed 2025)

Master's & EMBA capstones (5)

• Mohammed Danial Shaikh — LLMs and AI in Education (Master in Data Science, TRU, 2026)
• Melissa Fraser-Arnott — AI-Supported Misinformation Identification, Library of Canada's Parliament (UFred EMBA-AI, 2025)
• Caroline Reid — AI for Change-Management Metrics & KPI Tracking, Service Canada (UFred EMBA-AI, 2025)
• Elizabeth Modersohn — AI Risk Management & Governance in Financial Institutions: Assiniboine Credit Union (UFred EMBA-AI, 2025)
• Michel Ouellette — Canadian Medical Protective Association AI Needs Assessment (UFred EMBA-AI, 2025)

External PhD examinations (2026)

The Director served as external examiner for five doctoral dissertations spanning Alzheimer's ensemble classification, IoT-edge healthcare monitoring, NDN caching, big-data energy management for smart cities, and privacy in cyber-physical systems.