Muhammad Umar Aftab

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science
umar.aftab@nu.edu.pk
(041) 111-128-128
Ext: 198

Introduction

Dr. Muhammad Umar Aftab is an Associate Professor at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (FAST-NUCES), where he joined as an Assistant Professor in 2020. Prior to joining FAST-NUCES, he served as a Research Associate at the School of Information and Software Engineering (SISE), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC).

Dr. Umar received his PhD in Software Engineering from UESTC under the Chinese Government Scholarship, where he was recognized with academic and research excellence awards. He also holds an MS in Computer Science from the National Textile University, Faisalabad, Pakistan, where he was awarded a Silver Medal.

Dr. Umar has published several research articles in reputed international journals and conferences. His research experience includes participation in multiple funded research projects, including a prominent joint research project between Chinese and Pakistani institutions. His research interests primarily encompass Information Security, Network Security, Computer Networks, Access Control, Cryptography, Internet of Things (IoT), and emerging security technologies.

Education

Ph.D (Software Engineering), UESTC, China (2020)

MS (Computer Science), NTU, Pakistan (2014)

BS (Information Technology), GCUF, Pakistan (2011)

Publications

Hassan, Z. Qin, M. A. Rauf, M. U. Aftab, N. W. Hundera, X. Zhu., “Revocable Policy Hiding Bilateral Access Control Scheme With Equality Test for IIoT Environment,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2025.

Ali, J. Hassan, M. U. Aftab, N. W. Hundera, H. Xu, X. Zhu., “Securing Wireless Body Area Network with Lightweight Certificateless Signcryption Scheme using Equality Test,” Computer Standards & Interfaces, 2025.

W. Hundera, M. U. Aftab, D. Mefin, F. Dioubi, H. Xu, X. Zu., “An efficient heterogeneous online/offline anonymous certificateless signcryption with proxy re-encryption for Internet of Vehicles,” Vehicular Communications, 2024.

Usman, M. S. Sarfraz, M. U. Aftab, U. Habib, S. Javed., “A Blockchain Based Scalable Domain Access Control Framework for Industrial Internet of Things,” IEEE Access, 2024.

Zaidi, M. Usman, M. U. Aftab, H. Aljuaid, Y. Y. Ghadi., “Fabrication of Flexible Role-Based Access Control based on Blockchain for Internet of Things Use Cases,” IEEE Access, 2023.

Usman, M. S. Sarfraz, U. Habib, M. U. Aftab, S. Javed., “Automatic Hybrid Access Control in SCADA-Enabled IIoT Networks Using Machine Learning,” Sensors, 2023.

Oluwasanmi, M. U. Aftab, Z. Qin, M. S. Sarfraz, Y. Yu, H. T. Rauf., “Multi-head spatiotemporal attention graph convolutional network for traffic prediction,” Sensors, 2023.

Aziz, M. S. Sarfraz, M. Usman, M. U. Aftab, H. T. Rauf., “Geo Spatial Mapping of Hate Speech Prediction in Roman Urdu,” Mathematics, 2023.

Eltayieb, R. Elhabob, M. U. Aftab, R. Kuleev, M. Mazzara, M. Ahmad., “Secure aggregate signature scheme for smart city applications,” Computer Communications, 2022.

W. Hundera, C. Jin, D. M. Geressu, M. U. Aftab, O. A. Olanrewaju, H. Xiong., “Proxy-based public-key cryptosystem for secure and efficient IoT-based cloud data sharing in the smart city,” Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2022.

A. Assefa, W. Tian, N. W. Hundera, M. U. Aftab, “Crowd Density Estimation in Spatial and Temporal Distortion Environment Using Parallel Multi-Size Receptive Fields and Stack Ensemble Meta-Learning,” Symmetry, 2022.

T. Ngo, J. Jaafar, I. A. Aziz, M. U. Aftab, G. H. Nguyen, N. A. Bui., “Metaheuristic Algorithms Based on Compromise Programming for Multi-Objective Urban Shipment Problem,” Entropy, 2022.

Khan, D. Shehzad, N. shafi, Ga-young kim, M. U. Aftab., “Analyzing and Enabling the Harmonious Coexistence in Heterogeneous Wireless Communication Systems in Industrial Environment,” CMC-Computers Materials & Continua, 2022.

Oluwasanmi, M. U. Aftab, E. Baagyere, Z. Qin, M. Ahmad, M. Mazzara., “Attention Autoencoder for Generative Latent Representational Learning in Anomaly Detection,” Sensors, 2022.

Sun, Y. Yuan, M. Tang, X. Cheng, X. Nie, M. U. Aftab., “Privacy-preserving Bilateral Fine-grained Access Control for Cloud-enabled Industrial IoT Healthcare,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2021.

Latif, Z. e. Huma, S. S. Jamal, F. Ahmed, J. Ahmad, A. Zahid, K. Dashtipour, M. U. Aftab, M. Ahmad, Q. H. Abbasi., “Intrusion Detection Framework for the Internet of Things using a Dense Random Neural Network,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2021.

Zakria, J. Deng, Y. Hao, M. S. Khokhar, R. Kumar, J. Cai, J. Kumar, M. U. Aftab., “Trends in Vehicle Re-Identification Past, Present, and Future: A Comprehensive Review,” Mathematics, pp. 1-35, 2021

U. Aftab et al., “Secure and Dynamic Access Control for the Internet of Things (IoT) based traffic system,” PeerJ Computer Science, 2021.

T Son, J. Jaafar, I. A Aziz, B. N Anh, H. D Binh, and M. U. Aftab, “A Compromise Programming to Task Assignment Problem in Software Development Project,” CMC-Computers Materials & Continua, 2021.

Ahmad, A. K. Bashir, A. M. Khan,… and M. U. Aftab, “Multi Sensor-based Implicit User Identification,” CMC-Computers Materials & Continua, 2021. (SCI, IF:4.890)

W. Hundera, C. Jin, M. U. Aftab, D. Mesfin and S. Kumar, “Secure outsourced attribute-based signcryption for cloud-based Internet of Vehicles in a smart city,” Annals of Telecommunications, pp. 1-12, 2021.

Zakria, J. Deng, J. Cai, M. U. Aftab, M. S. Khokhar, R. Kumar, “Visual Features with Spatio-Temporal-Based Fusion Model for Cross-Dataset Vehicle Re-Identification,” Electronics, vol. 9, 2020.

U. Aftab et al., “A hybrid access control model with dynamic COI for secure localization of satellite and IoT-based vehicles,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 24196–24208, 2020.

Oluwasanmi, M. U. Aftab, A. Shokanbi, J. Jackson, B. Kumeda, and Z. Qin, “Attentively conditioned generative adversarial network for semantic segmentation,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 31733–31741, 2020.

U. Aftab et al., “Permission-based separation of duty in dynamic role-based access control model,” Symmetry (Basel)., vol. 11, no. 5, p. 669, May 2019.

Oluwasanmi, M. U. Aftab, E. Alabdulkreem, B. Kumeda, E. Y. Baagyere, and Z. Qin, “CaptionNet: automatic end-to-end siamese difference captioning model with attention,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 106773–106783, 2019.

Oluwasanmi, E. Frimpong, M. U. Aftab, E. Y. Baagyere, Z. Qin, and K. Ullah, “Fully convolutional captionnet: siamese difference captioning attention model,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 175929–175939, 2019.

Zakria, J. Cai, J. Deng, M. U. Aftab, M. S. Khokhar, and R. Kumar, “Efficient and deep vehicle re-identification using multi-level feature extraction,” Applied Sciences, vol. 9, no. 7, p. 1291, 2019.

Ngoc Anh,N. Tung Son,P. T. Lam, L.P. Chi, N. H. Tuan, M. U. Aftab et al, “A computer-vision based application for student behavior monitoring in classroom,” Applied Sciences, vol. 9, no. 22, p. 4729, 2019.

Collaborations at National and International Level

Detail of Funded Projects

Principal Investigator (PI) — “Lightweight Fine-Grained Access Control and Its Applications”, funded under the FAST Faculty Research Support Program.

Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) — “A Provably Secure Attribute-Based Generalized Proxy Signcryption Scheme with Incremental Cryptography for IoT-Enabled E-Healthcare”, funded under the FAST Faculty Research Support Program.

Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) — “Correlation Identification Between ECG Anomalies via MDE-Based End-to-End Deep Learning”, funded under the FAST Faculty Research Support Program.

Research Associate and Chinese University Project Member— “Research of Fine-Grained Hybrid Access Control and Its Application”, a joint research project between Pakistani and Chinese universities, funded by the Sichuan Provincial Government, China.

Research Associate — “Key Theories and Techniques of Privacy and Security Based on Data Life Cycle”, conducted under the supervision of the PhD supervisor at UESTC, China.

Research Associate — “Implementing Negative Authorization for an Affective RBAC”, an HEC-funded project.

HEC Travel Grant Recipient — Awarded an HEC Travel Grant to support international academic travel while pursuing a PhD degree.

Chinese Government Scholarship (CSC) Recipient — Awarded the Chinese Government Scholarship for a fully funded PhD program in Software Engineering at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), China.