Professor Babak Akhgar OBE (DFI)

Babak Akhgar is Professor of Informatics, founder and Director of CENTRIC (Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organized Crime Research). Prof Akhgar is Fellow of the British Computer Society. Prof Akhgar graduated from Sheffield Hallam University, UK, in Software Engineering. Afterwards he gained extensive commercial experience as a Strategy Analyst and Methodology Director for several companies. He consolidated this experience by obtaining a MSc Degree (with distinction) in Information Systems in Management from Sheffield Business School and a PhD in Strategic Information Systems from Sheffield Hallam University.

He has written, edited and co-edited 16 books on security related topics and has published more than 140 publications in international journals and conferences on information systems with specific focus on Intelligence management within the security domain. He is member of editorial boards of a number of international journals as well as Chair and Programme Committee Member of several international conferences. He has successfully supervised 18 PhD students. Prof Akhgar served as reviewer and evaluator for European Union security research programs since FP5. He has extensive and hands-on experience in the development, management and execution of security sensitive projects as researcher, technical lead and coordinator (30+ EU funded projects since FP5 and 50+ Projects at national level since 2001). As an example, he is Coordinator of the EU-funded project MIICT and Innovation Manager of the EU-funded project Starlight. Prof Akhgar is founder of the CENTRIC OSINT Hub, which is used by a wide range of law enforcement agencies in UK. The CENTRIC OSINT HUB provides law enforcement agencies with state-of-the-art capabilities to conduct open source based investigations from Organised Crime networks to Counter Terrorism.

Prof Akhgar was Trustee of the Police National Legal Database (PNLD) for 2 years. In 2016 he was chairman of the Police Strategy Forum. Prof Akhgar is member of the academic advisory board of SAS UK, Board member of the European Organisation for Security (EOS), member of the Europol External Advisory Board on data protection, member of South Yorkshire Police Evidence Based Policing. Since 2019 Prof Akhgar is board member of NEBRC. Prof Akhgar is PI on AP4AI (Accountability Principles for AI) project in collaboration with Europol and co-I on 3PO - UKRI project.    

Professor Babak Akhgar has been awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in June 2022, the second highest order of the British Empire award, in recognition of his services to security research.