ROBOTICS-2026

Ishfaq Ahmad has been a full professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) since 2002. Prior to that, he was an associate professor of computer science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). At HKUST, he also directed the university’s Multimedia Technology Research Center. At UTA, he led IRIS (Institute of Research in Security), an interdisciplinary research center of the university. He has extensively engaged with the industry in technology transfer, having collaborated with over 60 companies and spearheaded many interdisciplinary teams at UTA and across multiple universities. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and M.S. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, New York, U.S.A., in 1992 and 1987, respectively; his B.S. in Electrical Engineering is from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan, in 1985. He has authored 290-plus publications, including books and peer-reviewed research papers on supercomputing systems, parallel optimization algorithms, digital video compression, smart power grid, AI-driven assistive technologies, and sustainable computing. Dr. Ahmad has received over 40 international research awards and about $15 million in research funding. Google Scholar shows his research papers as highly cited, ranking him among the top ten researchers in several computer science and engineering sub-branches. Prof. Ahmad has given many PhD degrees, and his former students include senior-level professorial position holders in universities around the world, leaders in industry and U.S. government agencies, and Pakistani army officials. He has chaired over 20 international conferences and delivered over 150 talks, including several keynote speeches. While being a professor, he has held additional positions: a senior visiting scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China; a visiting lecturer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas; a frequent senior visiting scientist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems and co-founder of the International Green and Sustainable Computing (IGSC) Conference and International Conferences on Data Intelligence and Security (ICDIS). In addition, he has served as editor of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, and IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief of Springer’s Discover Internet-of-Things, which he also founded. Prof. Ahmad is a Distinguished Life Fellow by India's Institute of Doctors, Engineers, & Scientists (IDES). He is a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)—the Fellow grade is the highest of the IEEE and is conferred for extraordinary achievements in electrical engineering and computer science. He is the author of “The Perfect Human, Muhammad (PBUH), How the Last Prophet of God Changed the World,” the proceeds of which go to a non-profit charity trust.