Dr Ferheen Ayaz
Contact details
About
Overview
Ferheen Ayaz is a Lecturer in Computer Science at City St George's, University of London. Her research focuses on the development of AI-driven solutions for security, safety, and resilience in cyber-physical systems, with particular interests in multimodal artificial intelligence, edge AI, human-centred sensing, Internet of Things (IoT), and trustworthy intelligent systems.
Ferheen has interdisciplinary research experience. She has been awarded an EPSRC Green+ network project titled, 'The Unseen Part of Green: Building the Foundations for a Low-Energy Digital Twin to Monitor and Enhance Soil Health in Public Spaces' in collaboration with soil scientists.
Previously, she worked on projects funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), PETRAS, and industry partners, developing secure and intelligent solutions for connected vehicles, IoT systems, and edge computing platforms. Her research on securing vehicular communications has enabled the reliable delivery of safety-critical warnings and has been published in leading IEEE venues. She has also worked on secure peer-to-peer energy trading with a focus on user behaviour in the exchange.
She is currently supervising research on adaptive and personalised AI models that support human safety while maintaining privacy and user trust. Her research adopts a human-centred systems approach, bringing together expertise in AI, security, sensing technologies, and stakeholder co-design. She received HEIF grant for estabilishing industry partnership on secure and private edge-AI.
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, 2018 - May 2022
Employment
- Lecturer, City, University of London, United Kingdom, August 2024 - present
- Research Fellow, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, September 2022 - August 2024
- Research Associate, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom, November 2021 - August 2022
Fellowships
- N2Women Fellowship
Memberships of committees
- UKTIN Academic Strategic Working Group
Memberships of professional organisations
- IEEE
Awards
-
EPSRC Green+ Project (2026). Project Fund
EPSRC Green+ Network Project "The Unseen Part of Green: Building the Foundations for a Low-Energy Digital Twin to Monitor and Enhance Soil Health in Public Spaces" -
EDI Programme of the Year (2026). Electronics Weekly
Winner of EDI programme of the year for organising EDI-related activities in Women++, a society in the department of Computer Science. -
SST Dean Award (2026). SST Dean
Women++, a society led by Ferheen Ayaz, awarded as the best for EDI activities at School of Science and Technology at the university. -
City St. George's, University of London (2025). HEIF Funding
HEIF funding received to enhance industry collaboration with STMicroelectronics and organise symposium on the theme of 'AI Security and Privacy at the Edge'. -
Rising Star in Electronics (2024). Electronics Weekly
Nomination - University of Sussex (2023). Spirit of Sussex Gold Award
-
World Skills UK (2022). Rising Star Award in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Highly commended
Teaching
Undergraduate and Postgraduate
IN3046 / INM429 – Cloud Computing
Postgraduate
INM453 - Machine Learning Engineering and MLOps
Research
HEIF Funding (2024/2025)
Grant on the theme of 'AI security and privacy at the edge' to collaborate with STMicroelectronics (Italy).
EPSRC Green+ Network Project
The Unseen Part of Green: Building the Foundations for a Low-Energy Digital Twin to Monitor and Enhance Soil Health in Public Spaces - an interdisciplinary project for assessing soil health and ecology through Edge-AI and predicting the resulting green space via digital twins.
PhD Student
Adaptive AI for Security against Evolving Threats
Graduate Research Grant
MSc supervisee received IEEE Computer Society Graduate Research Grant for research at continual learning of edge-AI in collaboration with STMicroelectronics.
Research Poster Award
MSc supervisee received Best Poster Award at IEEE International Leadership Summit 2025 for her work on security of Edge-AI.
Publications
Publications by category
Book
- (2026). AI and Blockchain for Wireless Communications. Elsevier. ISBN 9780443340093.
Chapters (2)
- Ayaz, F. and Nekovee, M. (2026). AI and blockchain supported Internet-of-vehicles for net-zero. AI and Blockchain for Wireless Communications (pp. 199-235). Elsevier. ISBN 9780443340093.
- Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z., Tian, D. and Leung, V.C.M. (2021). Blockchain-Enabled Security and Privacy for Internet-of-Vehicles. Unmanned System Technologies (pp. 123-148). Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783030463342.
Conference papers and proceedings (13)
- Fayi, S., Ayaz, F. and Sheng, Z. (2026). REVS-T: Trust-Tier-Aware Provider Selection for Secure Vehicular Computation Offloading. 2026 IEEE International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking (MeditCom) 6-9 July.doi:10.1109/meditcom67211.2026.11641110
- Fayi, S., Ayaz, F. and Sheng, Z. (2025). A Blockchain-Based Reputation-Enhanced Vehicle Selection (REVS) for Computation Offloading. 2025 IEEE 102nd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2025-Fall) 19-22 October.doi:10.1109/vtc2025-fall65116.2025.11310384
- Ayaz, F., Nekovee, M. and Saeed, N. (2024). Blockchain-based Energy Trading among UAVs and Base Stations for Net-Zero. 2024 IEEE 10th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT) 10-13 November.doi:10.1109/wf-iot62078.2024.10811256
- Ayaz, F. and Nekovee, M. (2024). Quantum Optimization for Bidirectional Telecom Energy Exchange and Vehicular Edge Computing in Green 6G Networks. 2024 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm) 17-20 September.doi:10.1109/smartgridcomm60555.2024.10738076
- Jamshed, M.A., Ayaz, F., Kaushik, A., Fischione, C. and Ur-Rehman, M. (2024). Green UAV-enabled Internet-of-Things Network with AI-assisted NOMA for Disaster Management. 2024 IEEE 35th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) 2-5 September.doi:10.1109/pimrc59610.2024.10817434
- Ayaz, F. and Nekovee, M. AI-based energy consumption modeling of 5G base stations: an energy efficient approach. .doi:10.1049/icp.2024.2234
- Ayaz, F., Zakariyya, I., Cano, J., Keoh, S.L., Singer, J., Pau, D.... Kharbouche-Harrari, M. (2023). Improving Robustness Against Adversarial Attacks with Deeply Quantized Neural Networks. 2023 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 18-23 June.doi:10.1109/ijcnn54540.2023.10191429
- Ayaz, F. and Nekovee, M. (2023). Towards Net-Zero Goal through Altruistic Prosumer based Energy Trading among Connected Electric Vehicles. 2023 IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC) 26-28 April.doi:10.1109/vnc57357.2023.10136351
- Liu, B., Ayaz, F., Anh, H.D., Edwards, O., Zeng, Y., Sheng, Z.... Tian, D. UAV Integrated Internet-of-Vehicle (IoV) System for Flooding Monitoring and Rescue. .doi:10.1007/978-981-99-0479-2_91
- Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z., Ho, I.W.-.H., Tiany, D. and Ding, Z. (2022). Blockchain-enabled FD-NOMA based Vehicular Network with Physical Layer Security. 2022 IEEE 95th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2022-Spring) 19-22 June.doi:10.1109/vtc2022-spring54318.2022.9860421
- Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z., Tian, D., Liang, G.Y. and Leung, V. (2020). A Voting Blockchain based Message Dissemination in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). ICC 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 7-11 June.doi:10.1109/icc40277.2020.9148823
- Ayaz, F. and Ayaz, S. (2020). Analysis of GFDM as a Robust 5G Communication Technique in Noisy Environment. 2020 International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN) 7-10 January.doi:10.1109/icoin48656.2020.9016552
- Ayaz, F., Rabie, K. and Adebisi, B. (2018). Analysis of Optimized Threshold with SLM based Blanking Non-Linearity for Impulsive Noise Reduction in Power Line Communication Systems. 2018 11th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP) 18-20 July.doi:10.1109/csndsp.2018.8471861
Journal articles (15)
- Georgiades, M., Ioannou, I., Hou, Y., Islam, H., Ayaz, F. and Ho, K.-.H. (2026). Enhanced Vehicular Edge Offloading through SLA-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning and Risk-Aware Bandits. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
- Xu, Z., Tian, D., Zhou, J., Duan, X., Qu, K. and Ayaz, F. (2026). Robust landing trajectory tracking control for quadrotors under uncertain disturbances. Science China Information Sciences
- Ayaz, F., Nekovee, M., Sheng, Z. and Saeed, N. (2026). Digital Twin-Based Reinforcement Learning for Energy Exchange Among Electric Vehicles and Base Stations in a Disaster-Affected Region. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 27(5), pp. 6181-6190. doi:10.1109/tits.2025.3607305
- Ayaz, F., Nekovee, M. and Jha, N. (2026). Optimized Control of Bidirectional EV Charging for Net Zero with Incentivized Prosumerism. Future Transportation, 6(1), pp. 8-8. doi:10.3390/futuretransp6010008
- Jabr, O., Ayaz, F., Nekovee, M. and Saeed, N. (2025). Forecasting Infrastructure Needs, Environmental Impacts, and Dynamic Pricing for Electric Vehicle Charging. World Electric Vehicle Journal, 16(8), pp. 410-410. doi:10.3390/wevj16080410
- Ayaz, F., Nekovee, M. and Ibraheem, A.F. (2025). Telecom-to-Grid: Supercharging 6G’s Contribution for Reliable Net-Zero. IEEE Reliability Magazine, 2(2), pp. 40-48. doi:10.1109/mrl.2025.3544145
- Cui, M., Han, D., Liu, H., Li, K.-.C., Tang, M., Chang, C.-.C.... Guan, Y.L. (2024). Secure Data Sharing for Consortium Blockchain-Enabled Vehicular Social Networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 73(12), pp. 19682-19695. doi:10.1109/tvt.2024.3448207
- ul Khairi, D., Ayaz, F., Saeed, N., Ahsan, K. and Ali, S.Z. (2023). Analysis of Deep Convolutional Neural Network Models for the Fine-Grained Classification of Vehicles. Future Transportation, 3(1), pp. 133-149. doi:10.3390/futuretransp3010009
- Nekovee, M. and Ayaz, F. (2023). Vision, Enabling Technologies, and Scenarios for a 6G-Enabled Internet of Verticals (6G-IoV). Future Internet, 15(2), pp. 57-57. doi:10.3390/fi15020057
- Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z., Tian, D., Nekovee, M. and Saeed, N. (2022). Blockchain-Empowered AI for 6G-Enabled Internet of Vehicles. Electronics, 11(20), pp. 3339-3339. doi:10.3390/electronics11203339
- Xue, Z., Liu, Y., Han, G., Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z. and Wang, Y. (2022). Two-Layer Distributed Content Caching for Infotainment Applications in VANETs. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 9(3), pp. 1696-1711. doi:10.1109/jiot.2021.3089280
- Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z., Tian, D. and Guan, Y.L. (2022). A Blockchain Based Federated Learning for Message Dissemination in Vehicular Networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 71(2), pp. 1927-1940. doi:10.1109/tvt.2021.3132226
- Ayaz, F., Sheng, Z., Tian, D. and Guan, Y.L. (2021). A Proof-of-Quality-Factor (PoQF)-Based Blockchain and Edge Computing for Vehicular Message Dissemination. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 8(4), pp. 2468-2482. doi:10.1109/jiot.2020.3026731
- Kalwar, S., Ayaz, F., Korai, U.A. and Arain, Z.A. (2017). Analysis of Carrier Frequency Offset Suppression Techniques in SC-FDMA Communication System. Wireless Personal Communications, 95(2), pp. 317-329. doi:10.1007/s11277-016-3894-4
- Ali, Z., Ayaz, F. and Park, C.-.S. (2015). Optimized threshold calculation for blanking nonlinearity at OFDM receivers based on impulsive noise estimation. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2015(1). doi:10.1186/s13638-015-0416-0
Professional activities
Collaboration (industrial)
-
Researcher of Industrial Placement at Kinseed project (August 2021 - October 2022), United Kingdom
Sponsored by IEEE Electron Devices Society
Other
- Use Case included in AI For Good Global Summit with topic of Bidirectional Telecom-to-Grid and Telecom-to-Vehicle Energy Exchange for Net-Zero , International Telecommunication Union (ITU) .