Military College of Signals
Faculty Hammad Afzal

Hammad Afzal

Professor
Summary

Dr. Hammad Afzal is an accomplished academician, currently working as a Professor and heads the “Center of Data and Text Engineering and Mining” (CoDTeEM), a research lab at MCS NUST. He is recognized for his contributions in the fields of ML, NLP, and applied ML in smart healthcare, multi-lingual NLP, and information security. In Multi-lingual NLP, he is positioned among the top 10% most cited researchers on Google Scholar. Dr. Hammad completed PhD from School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK (ranked #26 in the QS World University Rankings 2023) and worked as Research Internee in Insight Center for Data Analytics, University of Ireland, Galway. He did MSc in Advanced Computing Sciences from University of Manchester, UK where he was awarded Program Prize of the year from Department of Computation for acquiring highest grades in MS courses. He has also garnered professional training and certifications from prestigious institutes such as IBM, DeepLearning.AI, Microsoft, and Google. He has over 15 years of teaching and research experience at various educational and research institutions. He has over 87 publications (with Cumulative Impact Factor of 211) in highly prestigious refereed international journals and conferences. He has supervised 3 PhD and 71 MS students (currently supervising 7 PhD and 7 MS). He is currently engaged in various funded projects, supported by a substantial funding amount of more than 20 Million PKR from various resources including Research and Academic Collaboration, Govt of Pakistan, National Grassroots ICT Research Initiative and BBSRC-funded project (UK). Dr. Hammad is a professional member of various national and international bodies such as IEEE (Senior Member) ACM, Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC). He has served as the Lead UG Curriculum Committee, PEC and HEC, for Sub-Group Software Engineering. He has also served as an evaluator for several National R&D programs including ICT R&D, NGIRI, NTS etc. He has also attained several awards such as Best Researcher MCS NUST of year 2019, Peter Jones Prize of the year 2005, to attain highest grades in all MSc courses in the Department of Informatics, University of Manchester, UK (Equivalent to Gold Medal). He has contributed extensively to the academic community by serving as Chair, Co-Chair and a member of the Technical Program Committee for several conferences, e.g. WETICE, ICMMI, ICOSST, MedPRAI etc. He has served as a reviewer of over 20 reputed international journals including IEEE Communications Magazines, the Journal of Natural Language Engineering, Neural Computing and Applications, Cluster Computing, etc. Apart from that, currently, he holds the position of Associate Editor for Human-centric Computing and Information Sciences, (a journal ranked in Q1 and in the top 10% according to Scopus and WoS) as well as for Mobile Information Systems. Additionally, he has had the honor of serving as a Guest Editor for two special issues in Security and Communication Networks (ranked in Q2 according to Scopus).

Academic Background
PhD (Machine Learning, Text Mining) University of Manchester January 01, 2006 - December 09, 2009
Honours and Awards
Biohackathon2010 Invited (and fully funded) by the University of Tokyo to participate in BioHackathon 2010 (http://hackathon3.dbcls.jp/) in Tokyo, Japan March 01, 2010
Peter Jones Prize Peter Jones Prize of the year 2005, to attain highest grades in all MSc courses in the Department of Informatics, University of Manchester, UK. December 12, 2005
PEC Chair SE Curriculum Head of SE Curriculum Committee, Pakistan Engineering Council January 05, 2020
Publications
A light-weight deep learning framework for Low Light Image Enhancement March 07, 2025 Neurocomputing - Volume 621, Article Number 129236
Semantic Web Approaches in Stack Overflow: Research Trends and Technological Insights November 01, 2024 International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems - Volume: 20, Issue:01, Pages: 61
Learning beyond books: A hybrid model to learn real-world problems August 21, 2024 Computer Applications in Engineering Education - Pages 1-15
Low Resource Summarization using Pre-trained Language Models July 03, 2024 ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing - Pages:19
Fuzzy ensemble of fined tuned BERT models for domain-specific sentiment analysis of software engineering dataset May 28, 2024 PLoS ONE - Volume 19(5), Article Number e0300279
Mining the Opinions of Software Developers for Improved Project Insights: Harnessing the Power of Transfer Learning May 06, 2024 IEEE Access - Volume:12, Page:65942-65955
Collaborative Solutions to Software Architecture Challenges Faced by IT Professionals May 04, 2024 International Journal of Human Capital and Information Technology Professionals (IJHCITP) - Volume 15, Issue 1, Pages 1-29
Enhancing Insider Threat Detection in Imbalanced Cybersecurity Settings Using the Density-Based Local Outlier Factor Algorithm March 04, 2024 IEEE Access - Volume:12, Page:34820-34834
Underwater image enhancement using lightweight vision transformer February 19, 2024 Multimedia Tools and Applications - Pages: 23
Mining crowd sourcing repositories for open innovation in software engineering January 08, 2024 Automated Software Engineering - Volume 31, Article number 11, Pages: 06
A novel hybrid CNN-LSTM approach for assessing StackOverflow post quality November 28, 2023 Journal of Intelligent Systems - Pages 1-21
Detection and Classification of Temporal Changes for Citrus Canker Growth Rate using Deep Learning November 17, 2023 IEEE Access - Volume 11, Pages 127637-127650
A Comprehensive Review of Recent Advances in Artificial Intelligence for Dentistry E-Health June 28, 2023 Diagnostics - Volume 13(13), Article Number 2196
Detection of Offensive Language and ITS Severity for Low Resource Language June 17, 2023 ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing - Volume: 22, Issue:06, Article Number: 156
Deep Learning-Based Multiclass Instance Segmentation for Dental Lesion Detection January 25, 2023 Healthcare - Volume 11(3), Article Number 347
Depression Detection Based on Hybrid Deep Learning SSCL Framework Using Self-Attention Mechanism: An Application to Social Networking Data December 13, 2022 Sensors - Volume 22(24), Article Number 9775
Advancements in Dentistry with Artificial Intelligence: Current Clinical Applications and Future Perspectives October 31, 2022 Healthcare - Volume 10, Issue 11, Article Number 2188
A deep learning assisted personalized deception system for countering web application attacks June 01, 2022 Journal of Information Security and Applications - Volume 67, Article Number 103169
Carving of the OOXML document from volatile memory using unsupervised learning techniques March 15, 2022 Journal of Information Security and Applications - Volume 65, Article Number 103096
An enhanced deep learning based framework for web attacks detection, mitigation and attacker profiling February 01, 2022 Journal of Network and Computer Applications - Volume 198, Article Number 103270
Enriching Conventional Ensemble Learner with Deep Contextual Semantics to Detect Fake News in Urdu January 01, 2022 ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing - Volume 21, Issue 1, Article Number 6, Pages 1-19
Pharmacovigilance with Transformers: A Framework to Detect Adverse Drug Reactions Using BERT Fine-Tuned with FARM August 13, 2021 Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine - Volume 2021, Article ID 5589829, 12 pages
Application Threats to Exploit Northbound Interface Vulnerabilities in Software Defined Networks July 13, 2021 ACM Computing Surveys - Volume 54, Issue 6, Article Number 121
AdS : An Adaptive Spectrum Sensing Technique for Survivability under Jamming Attack in Cognitive Radio Networks April 15, 2021 Computer Communications - Volume 172, Pages 25-34
NT-FDS-A Noise Tolerant Fall Detection System Using Deep Learning on Wearable Devices March 12, 2021 Sensors - Volume 21(6), Article Number 2006
DST-HRS: A topic driven hybrid recommender system based on deep semantics April 15, 2020 Computer Communications - Volume 156, Pages 183-191
Auto-MeDiSine: an auto-tunable medical decision support engine using an automated class outlier detection method and AutoMLP April 01, 2020 Neural Computing and Applications - Volume:32, Issue:7, Page:2621-2633
SS7 Vulnerabilities - A Survey and Implementation of Machine Learning vs Rule Based Filtering for Detection of SS7 Network Attacks April 01, 2020 IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials - Volume 22, Issue 2, Pages 1337-1371
Enriching Non-negative Matrix Factorization with Contextual Embeddings for Recommender Systems March 07, 2020 Neurocomputing - Volume: 380, Pages: 246-258
Delay Reduction Through Optimal Controller Placement to Boost Scalability in an SDDC October 01, 2019 IEEE Systems Journal - -
Fog computing in internet of things: Practical applications and future directions September 13, 2019 Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications - Volume 12, pages 1236–1262
AdDroid: Rule-Based Machine Learning Framework for Android Malware Analysis August 19, 2019 Mobile Networks and Applications - Pages 1-13
CATSWoTS: Context Aware Trustworthy Social Web of Things System July 12, 2019 Sensors - Volume: 19, Issue: 14, Article Number: 3076,
Accelerated Dynamic MRI Using Kernel-Based Low Rank Constraint July 05, 2019 Journal of Medical Systems - Volume 43, Pages 1-11
Forensic Analysis of Tor Browser: A Case Study for Privacy and Anonymity on the Web May 01, 2019 Forensic Science International - Volume 299, Pages 59-73
Auto-MeDiSine: An Auto-Tunable Medical Decision Support Engine using an automated Class Outlier Detection method and AutoMLP April 08, 2019 Neural Computing and Applications - Pages 1–13
Semantically enhanced concept search of the Holy Quran: Qur’anic English WordNet April 01, 2019 Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering - Volume 44, Issue 4, Pages 3953-3966
ARCA-IoT: An Attack-Resilient Cloud-Assisted IoT System February 01, 2019 IEEE Access - Volume 7, Pages 19616-19630
A Framework to Estimate the Nutritional Value of Food in Real Time Using Deep Learning Techniques December 27, 2018 IEEE Access - Volume 7, Pages 2643-2652
HRS-CE: A Hybrid Framework to integrate Content Embeddings in Recommender Systems for Cold Start Items November 01, 2018 Journal of Computational Science - Volume 29, Pages 9-18
AndroKit: A Toolkit for Forensics Analysis of Web Browsers on Android Platform October 09, 2018 Future Generation Computer Systems - Volume 94, Pages 781-794
Exploring Nested Ensemble Learners using Over-production and Choose Approach for Churn Prediction in Telecom Industry August 18, 2018 Neural Computing and Applications - Neural Computing and Applications
A Hybrid-Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System for Multi-Objective Regression Test Suites Optimization June 06, 2018 Neural Computing and Applications - Pages 1-15
Defence Against PUE Attacks in Ad hoc Cognitive Radio Networks: A Mean Field Game Approach May 29, 2018 Telecommunication Systems - Volume: 70 Issue: 1 Pages: 123-140 Published: JAN 2019
Forensic Investigation to detect forgeries in ASF Files of Contemporary IP Cameras April 26, 2018 The Journal of Supercomputing - Page 1–22
Improving handwriting based gender classification using ensemble classifiers November 01, 2017 Expert Systems with Applications - NULL
Impact of Feature Selection Algorithms on Blind Image Quality Assessment August 21, 2017 Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering - NULL
A Survey of Evolution in Predictive Models and Impacting Factors in Customer Churn July 01, 2017 Advances in Data Science and Adaptive Analysis - Volume: 9, Issue: 3, Article Number: UNSP 1750007
Reputation Management System for Fostering Trust in Collaborative and Cohesive Disaster Management July 01, 2016 International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (IJACSA) - NULL
Evaluation of Navigational Aspects of Moodle July 01, 2016 International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (ijacsa) - NULL
QoS Aware Wavelength Assignment in Wavelength Division Multiplexing Based Optical Networks January 30, 2015 International Journal of Multidisciplinary Sciences and Engineering (IJMSE) - Vol. 6, No.1, Pages 23-27
An Approach for Secure Semantic Data Integration at Data as a Service (DaaS) Layer January 01, 2015 International Journal of Information and Education Technology - Volume 5, No. 2, Pages 124-130
Mining Semantic Networks of Bioinformatics Web Resources from the Literature March 07, 2011 Journal of Biomedical Semantics - NULL
Conferences
An Explainable Machine Learning Approach for Early Prediction of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) August 26, 2024 - August 30, 2024 Muhammad Aatif, Ihtesham Ul Islam, Naima Iltaf, Hammad Afzal, International Conference on Asia Pacific Advanced Network
NLPColab at FigNews 2024 Shared Task: Challenges in Bias and Propaganda Annotation for News Media August 16, 2024 - August 16, 2024 Hammad Afzal, SEEMAB LATIF, Sadaf Abdul Rauf, Huda Sarfraz, Saadia Ishtiaq Nauman, Arooj Fatima, Sadaf Ziafat, Alishba Abdul Suboor, Proceedings of The Second Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference
Diagnosis and Identification of Citrus Canker Growth Rate Using Machine Learning August 04, 2023 - August 06, 2023 Naureen Zainab, Hammad Afzal, Fahim Arif, Abdul Ghafoor, Naima Iltaf, Muhammad Zakria, Muhammad Javed Hyder, Rafia Ahsan, 2023 IEEE 4th International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (PRML)
Detection and Analysis of Mental Health Illness using Social Media March 15, 2023 - March 16, 2023 Rabia Qayyum, Hammad Afzal, Khawir Mahmood, Naima Iltaf, 4th International Conference on Communication Technologies, ComTech 2023
Co-Clustering based Hybrid Collaborative Filtering Model March 15, 2023 - March 16, 2023 Aammna, Dr Naima Iltaf, Dr Hammad Afzal, Ain, Qurat Ul, 4th International Conference on Communication Technologies, ComTech 2023
Electricity Theft Detection Via Deep Learning March 15, 2023 - September 16, 2023 Sehrish Farid, Dr Naima Iltaf, Dr Hammad Afzal, 4th International Conference on Communication Technologies, ComTech 2023
A Survey of Network Features for Machine Learning Algorithms to Detect Network Attacks November 28, 2022 - November 30, 2022 Joveria Rubaab, Hammad Afzal, Waleed Bin Shahid, Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems
A Framework to Optimize Deep Learning based Web Attack Detection Using Attacker Categorization October 20, 2021 - October 22, 2021 Waleed Bin Shahid, Haider Abbas, Hammad Afzal, Saad Bin Khalid, 2021 IEEE 19th International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC)
Using Trust in Collaborative Filtering for Recommendations June 12, 2019 - June 14, 2019 Farah Saleem, naima iltaf, hammad Afzal, mobeena Shahzad, 2019 IEEE 28th International Conference on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE)
A Deep Learning Framework to Predict Rating for Cold Start Item Using Item Metadata June 12, 2019 - June 14, 2019 Fahad Anwaar, naima iltaf, hammad Afzal, Haider Abbas, 2019 IEEE 28th International Conference on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE)
Mining Mobile Security Concerns and their Solutions January 08, 2019 - January 12, 2019 Zeshan Anwar, Nazia Bibi, Hammad Afzal, 2019 16th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technology (IBCAST)
A Multi-Classifier Framework for Open Source Malware Forensics June 27, 2018 - June 29, 2018 Naeem Amjad, Muhammad Faisal Amjad, Hammad Afzal, Farrukh Aslam Khan, Proceedings - IEEE 27th International Conference on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE 2018)
Crowdsourced System to Report Traffic Violations RoadCop: Bi-Modular System March 16, 2018 - March 18, 2018 Maryam Jameela, Hammad Afzal, Khawar Khurshid, Asad Waqar Malik, 4th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems
Crowdsourced System to Report Traffic Violations March 16, 2018 - March 18, 2018 Maryam Jameela, Hammad Afzal, Khawar Khurshid, Asad Waqar Malik, 4th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS)
Trust management for SOA based social WoT system February 11, 2018 - February 14, 2018 Sabeen Javaid, Hammad Afzal, Fahim Arif, Naima altaf, International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, ICACT
Extension of Semantic Based Urdu Linguistic Resources Using Natural Language Processing November 06, 2017 - November 10, 2017 komal khalid, Hammad Afzal, faiza moqaddas, naima altaf, ahmed muqeem sheri, raheel nawaz, Proceedings - 2017 IEEE 15th International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 2017 IEEE 15th International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, 2017 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and 2017 IEEE Cyber Science and Technology Congress, DASC-PICom-DataCom-CyberSciTec 2017
MCS: Multiple classifier system to predict the churners in the telecom industry September 07, 2017 - September 08, 2017 Mehreen Ahmed, Hammad Afzal, Hammad Afzal, Behram Khan, 2017 Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys)
An expert system for diabetes prediction using auto tuned multi-layer perceptron September 07, 2017 - September 08, 2017 Maham Jahangir, Hammad Afzal, Mehreen Ahmed, Khawar Khurshid, Raheel Nawaz, 2017 Intelligent systems conference (IntelliSys)
Design pattern for secure object oriented information systems development January 14, 2017 - January 10, 2017 Muhammad Samiul Haq, Zeshan Anwar, Hammad Afzal, Ali Hassan, 2017 14th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technology (IBCAST)
Volunteer Reputation Evaluation for Emergency Response Operations November 30, 2016 - December 02, 2016 Anum Kaleem, Awais majeed, Tameem Ahmed, Hammad Afzal, Faisal bashir, 2015 2nd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Disaster Management (ICT-DM)
Pashto Sentiment Analysis Using Lexical Features November 22, 2016 - November 23, 2016 Uzair Kamal, Imran Siddiqi, Hammad Afzal, Arif ur Rehman, 1st Mediterranean Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, MedPRAI 2016
Analyzing Socio-economic and Geographical factors for Crime Incidents using Heat maps and Hotspots November 22, 2016 - November 22, 2016 Sunia Malik, Hammad Afzal, Imran Siddiqi, Awais Majeed, 1st Mediterranean Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, MedPRAI 2016
Spam filtering of bi-lingual tweets using machine learning January 31, 2016 - February 03, 2016 Hammad Afzal, Kashif Mehmood, 2016 18th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT)
Using Crowd-Source Based Features from Social Media and Conventional Features to Predict the Movies Popularity December 19, 2015 - December 21, 2015 Mehreen Ahmed, Maham Jahangir, Hammad Afzal, Awais Majeed, Imran Siddiqi, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Smart City/SocialCom/SustainCom (SmartCity)
Contributions to the study of bi-lingual Roman Urdu SMS spam filtering December 17, 2015 - December 17, 2015 Kashif Mahmood, Hammad Afzal, Awais Majeed, Hassan Latif, 2015 National Software Engineering Conference (NSEC)
Biomedical Text Mining for Concept Identification from Traditional Medicine Literature December 18, 2014 - December 20, 2014 Zeshan Javed, Hammad afzal, 2014 International Conference on Open Source Systems & Technologies
Creation of bi-lingual Social Network Dataset using classifiers July 21, 2014 - July 24, 2014 Iqra Javed, Hammad Afzal, 10th International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining in Pattern Recognition, MLDM 2014
Towards Creation of Linguistic Resources for Bilingual Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data June 18, 2014 - June 20, 2014 Iqra Javed, Hammad Afzal, Awais Majeed, Berhram Khan, 19th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems
Balancing Scalability, Performance and Fault tolerance in structured data February 16, 2014 - February 19, 2014 Amna Khalid, Hammad Afzal, Shoohira Aftab, 16th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology
Vocabulary of Quranic Concepts: A semi-automatically created terminology of Holy Quran December 13, 2012 - December 15, 2012 tayyaba mukhtar, Hammad Afzal, Awais Majeed, 15th International Multitopic Conference (INMIC)
A hybrid routing protocol for wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks July 03, 2012 - July 05, 2012 Veena Safdar, Faisal Bashir, Zara Hamid, Hammad Afzal, Jae Young Pyun, ISWPC 2012 proceedings
Research Associate University of Ireland July 01, 2009 - December 31, 2009