Ali A. Ghorbani

Background

About Ali A. Ghorbani

Dr. Ghorbani has dedicated the past 42 years to serving in various academic roles. He is a Professor of Computer Science, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity, a Co-founder and a scientific director of the National Cybersecurity Consortium, and the founding director of the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity which he established in 2016. Between 2008 and 2017, he also served as the Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick. Throughout his 42-year academic career, he has spent over 25 years conducting fundamental and applied research in machine learning, cybersecurity, and Critical Infrastructure Protection. Dr. Ghorbani has co-invented four awarded patents and filed one more. Moreover, he has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles during his career. In addition to this, he has supervised more than 250 research associates, postdoctoral fellows, and students. His book titled "Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems: Concepts and Techniques" was published by Springer in October 2010. Dr. Ghorbani has developed several technologies that have been adopted by high-tech companies. He has also co-founded three startups, Sentrant Security, EyesOver Technologies, and Cydarien Security, in 2013, 2015, and 2019. His contributions to the success of Q1 Labs Inc. and its QRadar technology have been featured in the book "Unicorn in the Woods" by Cordon Pitts (2020). Dr. Ghorbani is a co-founder of the UNB-NRC Cybersecurity Collaboration Consortium and the National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC), established in 2019 and 2020, respectively. He also co-founded the Privacy, Security, Trust (PST) Network in Canada and its annual international conference. From 2007 to 2017, Dr. Ghorbani served as the co-Editor-in-Chief of "Computational Intelligence: An International Journal". He has previously been a vice-president of the Canadian Association of Computer Science (CACS/AIC) and a member of the CIPS Professional Standards Advisory Council (PSAC), as well as the NSERC Committee on Safety and Security. Currently, he is a member of Statistics Canada's Advisory Council on Ethics and Modernization of Microdata Access and an associate member of the Digital Technology Supercluster. In 2017, Dr. Ghorbani received the Startup Canada Senior Entrepreneur Award. Two years later, he was honoured as one of the RBC top 25 Canadian immigrants of 2019 by Canadian Immigrant Magazine. Mark Bulgutch's book, Forty Brilliant Canadians and Their Vision for the Nation, also featured him as one of the 40 inspiring Canadians in 2022.