The Kashmir Hub for Artificial Intelligence Research

Biography: I am Dr. Shakeel A. Sheikh, a researcher in AI for Healthcare, currently working as a Data Science Innovation Fellow at Novartis AG, Switzerland. My work focuses on advancing AI for target identification in oncology, including in-silico perturbation of scRNA-seq using foundation models and LLMs for proteomics and agentic workflows. Previously, I served as a Postdoctoral Scientist at the Idiap Research Institute (EPFL, Switzerland) and Bielefeld University (Germany), where I worked on self-supervised learning, graph neural networks for healthcare applications. I hold a PhD from the University of Lorraine (Inria Research Institute), where I developed deep learning systems (StutterNet) for audio-based stuttering detection, contributing several peer-reviewed publications in top journals and conferences (IEEE JBHI, Neurocomputing, IEEE JSTSP, ICASSP, EUSIPCO, ACM Multimedia). My research spans multimodal deep learning, speech and audio processing, medical imaging, graph neural networks, and large language models, with applications across healthcare diagnostics, oncology, and low-resource NLP. I have been awarded prestigious fellowships and grants, including support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, German Humboldt Foundation, and multiple international summer schools (OxML, LxML, ALPS, DeepLearn). Beyond research, I actively collaborate across academia and industry, teach graduate-level deep learning courses, and review for leading IEEE/ACM journals. I am also the founder of two educational and AI-driven initiatives: Kashmir Guidance — supporting students pursuing international education.

I am passionate about building impactful AI systems—spanning healthcare problems that drive scientific discovery and improve human health.

Biography: He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Inria, France, and completed his postdoctoral research at LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France. He is a seasoned technology executive and strategic leader with a distinguished career driving innovation and architecting large-scale distributed systems across e-commerce, supply chain, and healthcare sectors. His expertise lies in leveraging cutting-edge technologies, including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), to deliver transformative, customer-centric solutions. A hands-on leader with a proven track record of aligning technical vision with business objectives, he excels at leading cross-functional teams through the entire product lifecycle—from ideation to deployment. He is recognized for exceptional people management and a collaborative leadership style, fostering cultures of mentorship, continuous learning, and operational excellence. Passionate about emerging technologies, his work is characterized by a pragmatic, problem-solving approach to translating complex challenges into robust, high-performance systems.

Biography: He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, India, in 2019. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has served as a Researcher in NLP at Prince Sultan University, KSA, and as a Lecturer at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology (IIK) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. He pursued his postdoctoral research at the Norwegian Biometrics Laboratory (NBL), NTNU, Norway. He is the recipient of the Alain Bensoussan Fellowship award under the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France. His research focuses on extracting and analyzing social data and applying different statistical and deep learning techniques in developing prediction models.

Biography: He is a researcher, educator, and technologist passionate about exploring how decentralized systems, intelligent technologies, and data-driven solutions can shape the future. With a Ph.D. in Computer Science, he has worked across academia and industry, focusing on making blockchain and digital systems more scalable, trustworthy, and interoperable. His work brings together DLT, blockchain, machine learning, privacy, data analytics to build smarter and more reliable digital ecosystems. A Certified Enterprise Blockchain Architect, he enjoys transforming ideas into practical innovations, mentoring students, and collaborating with international teams. Driven by curiosity and a love for problem-solving, Idrees continues to explore emerging technologies while inspiring others to think boldly, experiment freely, and create impactful solutions.

Dr. Ajaz Ahmad Bhat leads research in cognitive robotics, AI, and brain-inspired computing systems. His work focuses on developing intelligent robots that can learn, reason, and adapt like biological systems. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Intelligent Robotics at the Faculty of Digital Science, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei, and a visiting researcher at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. Prior to this posting, he worked as a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, UK, and then as an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente, Netherlands.

Biography: Ajaz's research interests lie at the intersection of intelligent robotics, cognitive sciences, and consumer technologies with a special focus on understanding and designing developmental and cumulative learning systems. His research outputs have been published in more than 15 journal articles with some of them in top-tier journals such as Psychological Review and Autonomous Robots. His work on Causal Learning in Robots was covered in top conferences like ICML and by media outlets such as BBC. He has been involved in multiple international research projects such as EU's FP7 DARWIN and NIH's WOLVES. Ajaz retains memberships of both IEEE and APS societies in addition to holding a Ph.D. in Cognitive Robotics from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy.