Zahid Islam

Zahid Islam is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean (Research) at Charles Sturt University's Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences (FoBJBS). He leads the Data Science and Engineering Research Unit (DSERU) and the Cyber Security CRC initiatives. His research focuses on Data Mining, Cyber Security, Privacy-Preserving Techniques, and Machine Learning applications in real-world domains such as healthcare and agriculture.

Key roles include:

• Associate Dean (Research), FoBJBS (since 2023)
• Director, DSERU (2019–2023)
• Theme Lead & Academic Lead, Cyber Security CRC (2021–2023)

Research interests span:

• Data Mining: Classification, Clustering, Federated Learning, Missing Value Analysis
• Cyber Security: Malware Detection, Adversarial Attacks, IoT Security
• Applications: Healthcare, Agriculture, Smart Farming, Supply Chain

Recent work includes developing frameworks for ransomware detection (RADAR dataset), collaborative learning in healthcare (CL3), and privacy-preserving techniques like UD-LDP. His cyber security research has earned the 2021 Cyber Security Researcher of the Year Award (AISA).

Key grants include:

• $5M+ external funding for cybersecurity projects
• AI for Mental Health Support (2025)
• Adaptive Federated Learning Grant (2024)

Labs/Groups: Data Mining Research Group (DaMRG), Machine Vision and Digital Health (MaViDH), Cyber Security Research Group (CSRG)