Dr. Akhtar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Network and Computer Security at State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (USA) since August 2020. Prior to this, he was a Research Assistant Professor at University of Memphis, USA (2018-2020) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at INRS-EMT-University of Quebec, Canada (2016-2018), University of Udine, Italy (2013-2016), Bahcesehir University, Turkey (2013), and University of Cagliari, Italy (2012-2013), respectively. He was a visiting Research Fellow at University of Cagliari, Italy, from 2008 to 2009. Between 2005 to 2008, he was Junior Research Fellow at University of Pune, India. In 2004, he worked as a summer intern at Tata Motors Limited, India.

Dr. Akhtar received the Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering from University of Cagliari (Italy). He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Access journal. Moreover, he is a Senior Member of IEEE as well as a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is also a recipient of the Premium Award for Best Paper in IET Biometrics Journal (2014), Outstanding Paper Award at the International Conference on Internet (2017), Best Industry-Oriented research work award at National Seminar on Physics and Technology of Sensors (2007), Outstanding Contribution in Reviewing Award in the prestigious journal Pattern Recognition Letters (2016), and Thrice Best Reviewer Award at the International Conference on Vision, Image and Signal Processing (2017, 2018 & 2019).

Dr. Akhtar’s current research interests are in the areas of Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition with applications to Biometrics, Affect Recognition, Image and Video Processing, Perceptual-Based Audiovisual Multimedia Quality Assessment, and Cybersecurity.