Contributions to Research Excellence

Research Background

My research did not begin with Agri-tech, health tech or fintech. It began in 2011, during my Master's degree at the National University of Malaysia, with RFID technology, and carried through my PhD into wireless sensor networks and intelligent identification systems. That early work asked a simple question: how an object can communicate what it is and where it is, and over the following decade, that question widened into the Internet of Things, then into smart cities, smart agriculture and health tech, as the same underlying problem, connecting objects, reading their data and turning it into a decision, kept reappearing in new settings. Those methods still guide how I work in the AIoT Impact Lab. A health-tech model reading a scan and an Agri-tech system reading a field of sensors both rely on the same principle, which I first tested with RFID tags, which showed that many signals can be captured at once and trusted. The AIoT Impact Lab is not a new direction for me. It is where more than a decade of RFID and IoT research finally converges with teaching, industry partnership and postgraduate supervision in one place.

Since 2014, I have taken on committee-chairing or review roles at 20 international conferences, and I hold senior membership of IEEE alongside active roles in the ACM, the New Zealand AI Research Association, and IoT Forum New Zealand. I am an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Waikato and serve as Unitec's relationship manager for our partnership with One NZ. Underneath all of the titles is one habit I have kept for years. When I meet a good researcher at a conference, I try to turn that meeting into an ongoing relationship. Most of what follows in this section grew out of exactly that. I received the Unitec Excellence Award in Research 2025.

What comes back from my international collaborations and networking is what matters here: research methods, technologies, collaborators, student project ideas, and comparative perspectives that our own students and industry partners here in NZ could not otherwise access. My international committee and editorial roles are the mechanisms through which international research and industry knowledge continue to arrive at MITU, and part of my case for promotion is that this conduit is worth resourcing and expanding.

Research Interests:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Internet of Things (IoT)
RFID Technology
Smart Agriculture
Digital Healthcare
Project-based Learning and Industry-based Learning

Research and Advanced Practices Impacts:

When conducting research and advanced practices, I consistently assess the impact of my activities to guide me on the correct path. My ResearchGate research interest score is 227, with 314 citations and a readership of more than 27,700 for my publications as of Jan 2025.

Beyond citations and readership numbers, my research significantly influences my teaching. Focusing on IoT and smart cities enhances my ability to guide students effectively, ensuring their success in their practical projects and research. I'm also keen on investigating project-based learning, which helps coordinate industrial and project activities within the school.

Complementing my academic research and publications, I actively organise TechTALK, a series of seminars on research and industry. TechTALK yields several key impacts:

Industry Partnerships: For potential collaborations in research, student projects, internships, and guest speakers.
Industry Advisory Committee: Membership facilitates strategic connections.
Inter-Institutional Bonds: TechTALK fosters connections with esteemed universities and institutions, leading to collaborative research and symposium participation. TechTALK successfully co-organised seminars with generous support from the University of Auckland, AUT, Massey University, Unitec, EIT, Otago Polytechnic, and Techtorium.
Profile Enhancement: TechTALK elevates Unitec's profile by hosting prestigious external speakers at Unitec and inviting Unitec's leaders and researchers to contribute to the conversations.

Selected Publications

I've contributed to 61 journal publications and conference/poster presentations, with a Google Scholar citation count of 314 and an H-index of 10. Following is the list of my papers:

Fonseka, H., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. A Novel CVAE-Vision Transformer Hybrid Approach for Enhanced Alzheimer’s Detection in Early Stages. Journal of Medical Imaging (Under Review).
Le, A. T., Shakiba, M., Ardekani, I., & Abdulla, W. H. (2024). Optimising Plant Disease Classification with Hybrid Convolutional Neural Network–Recurrent Neural Network and Liquid Time-Constant Network. Applied Sciences, 14(19), 9118.
Le, A. T., Shakiba, M., & Ardekani, I. (2024). Tomato Disease Detection with Lightweight Recurrent and Convolutional Deep Learning Models for Sustainable and Smart Agriculture. Frontiers in Sustainability, 5, 1383182.
Zhang, E., Shakiba, M., Lin, F., Hassandoust, F., Varastehpour, S. (2025, May) Optimising Social Media with Gen AI: A Study on SEO Strategies for Influencers. In 11th International Conference on Computer Technology Applications (ICCTA 2025) (Submitted).
Lin, F., Shakiba, M., Zhang, E., Varastehpour, S. (2025, May) A Recommendation System Model for Instagram Influencer Marketing Campaign. In 11th International Conference on Computer Technology Applications (ICCTA 2025) (Submitted).
Debnath, B., Shakiba, M., Varastehpour, S. (2025, March). Clustering and Prediction: Evaluation of Machine Learning Models for Robust Business Operation. In the 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications (ICAIA 2025). Springer. (Submitted).
Sojan, G., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. (2025, March). Forex Prediction using Deep Learning: CNN, LSTM, GRU and hybrid models. In the 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications (ICAIA 2025). Springer. (Submitted).
Dave, Y., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. (2025, March). Predicting Forex Prices: An Evaluation of Long Short-Term Memory, XGBoost and Transformer Architectures. In IEEE 5th International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics and Computing Technology (EECT 2025). IEEE (Accepted).
Thu, T.M., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. (2025, March). Deep Learning Approaches for Predicting Stock Market Trends: A Comparative Study of New Zealand and Australian Markets. In IEEE 5th International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics and Computing Technology (EECT 2025). IEEE (Accepted).
Dave, Y., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. (2024, October). Forex Price Prediction: A Multi-Model Approach Integrating Sentiment Analysis Using LLMs with LSTM, XGBoost, Transformer Models. In the 18th International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA). Springer.
Trehan, M., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M., Ramirez Prado, G., Barmada, B. (2024, October). Predicting New Zealand’s Stock Market Trends: Combining Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning. In the 18th International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA). Springer.
Nortey, J., Tran, B., Montano, D., Sanjanwala, U., Shakiba, M. (2024, October). Application of VR Technology for Driving Mentoring. In 15th Computing and Information Technology Research and Education New Zealand (CITRENZ). Poster Presentation.
Li, T., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. (2024, October). Methods in Skill Extraction from Job Descriptions. In 15th Computing and Information Technology Research and Education New Zealand (CITRENZ). Poster Presentation.
Ramirez-Prado, G., Barmada, B., Varastehpour, S., Shakiba, M. (2024 September) Empowering Homes: On Navigating Energy Hardship with Consumption Monitoring in New Zealand. In The International Conference on Sustainable Development. Poster Presentation.
Shakiba, M., et al. “Bridging the Gap in Network Security and Data Management through IoT Innovation” 4th Interdisciplinary Conference on Electrics and Computer (INTCEC 2024) - Chicago - Illinois - USA - Under Review
Shakiba, M., et al. “Digital Forensic Tools: Comparison of Autopsy TSK and Forensic Explorer” IEEE International Conference on Information Technology, Electronics and Intelligent Communication Systems - Vemana Institute of Technology (VIT), Bangalore - India - Accepted
Adlakha, R., Shakiba, M., et al. “Comparative Analysis of LSTM, GRU, and XGBoost for Forex Prediction: A Deep Learning Approach” 2024 1st International Conference on Innovative Engineering Sciences and Technological Research (ICIESTR-2024) - UTAS-Muscat, Sultanate of Oman - Under Review
Shakiba, M., et al. “Sustainable Cyber-Physical Platform for Optimal Greenhouse Growth” Smart Sustainable Development 2024
Le, A., Shakiba, M., et al. “Lightweight CNN-RNN Model for Sustainable and Smart Agriculture” Smart Sustainable Development 2024
Shakiba, M., et al. “Project-Based Learning a Successful Capstone Project Experience at Unitec, School of Computing” 2022 ITP Research Symposium
Ardekani, I., Shakiba, M. “Intelligent Beehive Monitoring using Machine Learning Models” 2022 ITP Research Symposium
David, A., Shakiba, M., et al. “Penetration Testing & Mitigation Techniques for Windows and Linux” 2022 Unitec-MIT Research Symposium
Noutash, M., Shakiba M. “Enhance Organisational Performance Using Sustainable Software Monitoring System” 2022 Unitec-MIT Research Symposium
Shakiba, M., Zavvari, A., Aleebrahim, N., & Singh, M. J. (2016). Evaluating the academic trend of RFID technology based on SCI and SSCI publications from 2001 to 2014. Scientometrics, 109, 591-614.
Shakiba, M., Ale Ebrahim, N., Danaee, M., Bakhtiyari, K., & Sundararajan, E. (2016). A Comprehensive Comparison of Educational Growth within Four Different Developing Countries between 1990 and 2012. Revista de Gestão e Secretariado, 6(3), 152-174.
Shakiba, M., Singh, M. J., Islam, M. T., & Sundararajan, E. (2015). Applying cubic spline method to estimate the number of RFID tags in error-prone communication channels. Wireless Personal Communications, 83, 361-382.
Shakiba, M., et al. “Intelligent Items Traceability System–RFID vs QR”. The Ingenieur. Volume 61, 73-76.
Shakiba, M., Singh, M. J., Sundararajan, E., Zavvari, A., & Islam, M. T. (2014). Extending birthday paradox theory to estimate the number of tags in RFID systems. PloS one, 9(4), e95425.
Ale Ebrahim, N., Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Danaee, M., Mohammadjafari, M., Zavvari, A., ... & Shahbazi-Moghadam, M. (2014). Equality of Google Scholar with Web of Science citations: Case of Malaysian engineering highly cited papers. Modern Applied Science, 8(5), 63-69.
Bakhtiyari, K., Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Shakiba, M., Zavvari, A., Shahbazi-Moghadam, M., ... & Mohammadjafari, M. (2014). Ethical and unethical methods of plagiarism prevention in academic writing. International Education Studies, 7(7), 52-62.
Zavvari, A., Islam, M. T., Shakiba, M., & Mandeep, S. J. (2014, December). Theoretical analysis of RFID security protocols. In 2014 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (pp. 302-306). IEEE.
Shakiba, M., Sundararajan, E., Zavvari, A., & Islam, M. (2013). Cubic spline-based tag estimation method in RFID multi-tags identification process. Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 36(1), 11-17.
Zavvari, A., Shakiba, M., Islam, M. T., Sundararajan, E., & Singh, M. J. (2013). Computational cost analysis on securing RFID protocols conforming to EPC class-1 generation-2 standard. Procedia Technology, 11, 778-784.
Badpa, A., Yavar, B., Shakiba, M., & Singh, M. J. (2013). Effects of knowledge management system in disaster management through RFID technology realization. Procedia Technology, 11, 785-793.
Shakiba, M., Zavvari, A., & Sundararajan, E. (2011, November). Fitted dynamic framed slotted ALOHA anti-collision algorithm in RFID systems. In ICIMU 2011: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Technology & Multimedia (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Fund Applications:

I am actively pursuing research funding and external grants to support innovative and impactful projects. To date, I have contributed to 17 grant applications, successfully securing approximately NZD 680,000 in funding (including USD 155,000, SGD 10,000, NZD 187,500, and MYR 497,000). Below is a list of funded and submitted grant applications:

Unitec Project Leader. Explainable and Privacy-Preserving Multi-Agent Framework for Autonomous Healthcare Software Development. International Research Consortium – 5 Universities – 5 Countries: Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Philippines and New Zealand, Unitec Internal Matching Fund, In Progress – ~NZD 62,500 (Unitec Contribution NZD 12,500)
Project Team Member. STIP-Lite: A Web-Based Sustainable Tourism Intelligence Platform for Proactive Urban Tourism Governance in Singapore’s Civic District, Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration Funding. Leading by James Cook University Singapore – 3 Universities – 4 Countries: Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia – Submitted on 14 Sep 2026 – Reference # 28031– SGD 10,000
Co-Investigator. Listening to the Brain: Paired Voice-MRI AI for Earlier Alzheimer’s Detection, Project Grant, Auckland Medical Research Foundation, NZD 85,000 – Submitted
Co-Investigators. Making Transport & Logistics Data SME-Ready in New Zealand, CILT Transport Research and Educational Trust Project Grants. Led by the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, AUT – NZD 15,000
Primary Applicant (2024-2025), Cloud-based Autonomous AgriTech Vehicle. KiwiNet Pre-Seed Commercialisation Fund, NZD 40,000 – Project Code: UT002962
Principal Investigator (2025), Cloud-based Autonomous AgriTech Vehicle, Unitec Early Career Fund, NZD 2,000 – Project Code: to be assigned
Associate Investigator (2025), AI Platform for Plant Disease Detection, Unitec Early Career Fund, NZD 7,000 – Project Code: to be assigned
Primary Applicant. Entrepreneurial Fund, Microsoft for Startups Cloud Credit – USD 150,000
Project Leader. Industry AWS Cloud Fund – USD 5,000 (AWS Account #: 418295693653)
Primary Applicant. Industry Fund (In Kind), One NZ (Vodafone) 5G Research Fund (6 × 5G Sim cards for Research – Value ~ NZD 26,000)

Some Testimonials on Research Activities

Principal Investigator (2016-2017) Intelligent Traffic Light Control Based on RFID Technology in the Concept of Smart Cities. Monash Internal Grant - School of IT Collaborative Research Seed Grants (SEED), (MYR 12,000)
Research Assistant (2015), Exploring Data Streams Association Rules Mining on Clouds. Exploratory Research Grant Scheme (ERGS), (MYR 72,000), Project Code: ERGS/1/2013/ICT07/ULM/02/3
Research Assistant (2014) Performance and Reliability of Radio Frequency Identification. Innovation Fund (MYR 150,000), Project Code: PKT 1/2010
Technical Executive (2013) The Compact Printed Planar Antenna of Lab-scale Model to a Prototype for Broadband Communication. Innovation Fund (MYR 90,000), Project Code: INOVASI-2012-022
Technical Executive (2012) Prototyping of RFID Reader Antenna for Commercial Product and Market Testing. Innovation Fund (MYR 98,000), Project Code: INOVASI-2011-033
Research Assistant (2012), UDP and High-Performance Computing. Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS), (MYR 50,000), Project Code: UKM-TT-02-FRGS0205-2010
Research Assistant (2011) Running High-Performance Computing on Condor Platform. Incentive Grant for Young Researchers (GGPM), (MYR 25,000), Project Code: UKM-GGPM-ICT-104-2010

Keynote Speaker and Panel Member

Panel member and speaker at TechTALK: Empowering Future Tech Careers through Collaborative Education Systems hosted by The University of Auckland, Faculty of Engineering.

Panel member and speaker at Forging a New Age of India- New Zealand Relations Symposium hosted by the High Commission of India, Wellington, New Zealand.

Speaker IEEE Workshop at hosted by The University of Technology and Applied Sciences - IEEE Oman Sector.

Research Services

Editor

KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems, KSII
AIoT Global Summit 2025 Conference Proceedings – Unitec ePress

Reviewer

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence – Elsevier – Impact Factor 9.0
Information Processing in Agriculture – Elsevier – Impact Factor 8.9
Mobile Networks and Applications - Springer Nature Link – Impact Factor 1.7
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing – IEEE – Impact Factor 8.8
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing Letters (SPL) – IEEE – Impact Factor 3.6
Array Multidisciplinary Journal – Elsevier – Impact Factor 5.3
Education and Information Technologies – Springer Nature Link – Impact Factor 7.2
Electronics, MDPI – Impact Factor 2.9

Programme Committee and Chair

- The 24th Australasian Data Science and Machine Learning Conference (AusDM'26) – Special Session Co-Chair
- Smart Aotearoa – Sustainable Development 2026, Auckland, NZ
- AI Hackathon 2026 - Aotearoa Hackathon Festival, Auckland, NZ – Lead Organiser
- AIoT Global Summit: Economic Growth 2025, Metaverse – Summit Chair
- Smart Aotearoa – Sustainable Development 2025, Auckland, NZ
- International Conference on AI for Sustainable Society 2025, Japan
- 8th International Conference on Sensors, Signal and Image Processing 2025, Japan
- Smart Aotearoa – Sustainable Development 2024, Auckland, NZ
- AWS GenAI Hackathon 2024, Auckland, NZ – Chairman and Judging Panel
- 4th Interdisciplinary Conference on Electrics and Computer (INTCEC) 2024, Chicago, US – Online Session Chair
- International Conference on Innovative Engineering Sciences and Technological Research (ICIESTR-2024), Muscat, Oman
- Smart Aotearoa – Sustainable Development 2023, Auckland, NZ
- 14th Computing and IT Research and Education New Zealand (CITRENZ) 2023, Auckland, NZ, Committee Member and Session Chair
- MIT-Unitec Research Symposium 2022, Auckland, NZ – Session Chair
- ITP-SIT Research Symposium 2022, Invercargill, NZ – Panel Moderator
- Smart Aotearoa – Sustainable Development 2022, Auckland, NZ
- Sustainable Development Research Symposium – Otago Polytechnic 2021, Auckland, NZ
- The 28th Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2017
- Telemedicine Conference Sunway, 2016, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- IEEE Malaysia Student Congress 2014, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2014

Research Talk Organiser

- Cybersecurity meetup - a collaboration between the School of Computing and the Research Office at Unitec
- Vocational education and training in Switzerland – new learning cultures in enterprises

Membership

- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- IT Professionals New Zealand
- IEEE Senior Member
  - IEEE Computer Society
  - IEEE Agricultural Robotics and Automation Technical Committee Member
  - IEEE Internet of Things Community Member
  - IEEE Young Professionals Member
  - IEEE Education Society Member
- New Zealand Robotics, Automation, and Sensing (NZRAS) Member
- New Zealand AI Research Association Member
- IoT Forum New Zealand - Executive Council

Research and Project Supervision

Postgraduate Supervision

Research Fellow, Research Assistants and Research Partner:

M. Aghababaie (2026-Current) – Research Partner working on the Cloud-based Autonomous AgriTech Vehicle, supported by the KiwiNet fund
A. Tolstykh (2025-Current) – Honorary Research Fellow working on the Cloud-based Autonomous AgriTech Vehicle, supported by the KiwiNet fund
K. Fonseka (2025) – Research Assistant working on the Cloud-based Autonomous AgriTech Vehicle, supported by Unitec Internal Fund (RI25003)
R. Patel (2025) – Research Assistant working on the AI Platform for Plant Disease Detection, supported by Unitec Internal Fund (RI25004)

Doctorate Research Supervision:

S. L. Rodriguez Monsivais (2026-Current) - An Integrated Framework for Automatic Web Testing: Happy-Path Discovery, Self-Healing Test Generation (UI and API), and Intelligent Reporting

Master's Thesis Supervision:

Tarun Joseph (2026) – Journey Risk Scoring for Auckland Public Transport
I. Mongia (2026) – A feasibility study for early warning of pump failure using causal sliding windows and event-level evaluation on anonymised multi-sensor pump data.
R. Kumar Yadav (2026) – Integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning (ML) for Smart Irrigation Systems: An Anomaly-Detection-Driven Approach
Y. Bhatt (2026) – Context-Aware Communication Filtering for LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems
S. De Silva (2025-2026) – A Lightweight YOLO Model for Grapevine Trunk Disease Detection and Severity Grading
M. Virajini (2025) – A lightweight and explainable hybrid model for early apple leaf disease detection
M. Jumly (2025) – Precision Farming Tech Adoption Among Horticulture Farmers in NZ
S. Salimon (2024-2025) – A Hybrid DL Approach for Grape Leaf Disease Detection Using YOLOv10 and EfficientNet
J.S. Bedi (2024-2025) – Grape Disease Detection Using CNN-ViT Hybrid Model with RF Classifier
G. Hinton (2024) – Using Computer Vision to Predict Apple Ripeness and Optimise Picking Time
S. Mane (2024) – Deep Learning-Based Plant Disease Detection and Recognition
S. Singh (2024) – Integrating the Precision Agriculture Techniques with Rice Disease Prediction
M. Arora (2024) – Smart Agriculture: Apple Disease Detection Using Deep Learning
B. Mangotra (2024) – Deepfake Detection: Evaluating Performance Across Differing Scenarios
Y. Xian (2024) – Enhance Diagnostic Accuracy in Imbalanced Datasets Using BERT Optimisation
A. L. Tanh (2023-24) – AI-Enhanced Plant Disease Detection for Smart Agriculture
M. Trehan (2023-24) – New Zealand Stock Market Prediction Using Sentiment Analysis
Y. Dave (2023-24) – Predicting Forex Pair Movement

Postgraduate Applied Project Supervision:

- H. Fonseka (2024) – Hybrid CAVE-Vision Transformer Network for Early-Stage Alzheimer's Diagnosis
- E. Zhang (2024) – GenAI for Social Media Account Optimisation
- F. Lin (2024) – A Recommendation System for Influencer Marketing Campaigns
- B. Debnath (2024) – A Comparative Analysis of Customer Segmentation and Stock Determination Using Unsupervised Machine Learning Models
- R. Adlakha (2023) – CNN-LSTM Enhanced Forex Forecasting Through Effective Data Pre-Processing

Undergraduate Supervision

Unitec Institute of Technology (2021 - Current) - I coordinate the Capstone Project, a level 7 course under the Bachelor of Computer Science programme with 60 credits, and supervise several students on their projects and research activities.
Techtorium (2018 - 2020) - I was the Capstone Project coordinator, a level 6 course under a Software Development diploma with 30 credits, and supervised several students on their practical projects.
Monash University (2016 - 2017) - I supervised several bachelor students on their Final Year Project. I also coordinate Industry-based learning in the School of IT and manage and supervise students' practical work.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse