Narasimha Rao Vajjhala

Narasimha Rao Vajjhala is Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), and a Senior Member of both the ACM and the IEEE. Over more than eighteen years he has taught and led programmes across the Western Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the United Kingdom — building a career defined by the ability to bridge the gap between technology and the organisations and societies that depend on it.

He holds a Doctorate in Information Systems and Technology from the University of Phoenix (USA), a Master of Business Administration in Information Systems Management from the Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch (Switzerland), a Master of Computer Applications from Osmania University (India), and a Postgraduate Certificate in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom). Before joining AUBG he served as Associate Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the University of New York Tirana, Albania.

His research spans machine learning, cybersecurity, healthcare informatics, project management, technology acceptance, and the adoption of technology in transition economies. His work is indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science (SSCI, SCIE and ESCI), including Scopus Q1 journals such as Systems and Sustainability, alongside edited books with CRC Press/Routledge and IGI Global and an authored monograph. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Risk and Contingency Management, an Associate Editor of Information Security Journal: A Global Perspective (Taylor & Francis), and serves on the editorial boards of several Scopus-indexed journals. He has also served on the scientific and technical committees of international conferences, among them WorldCIST'26, CSTE 2026 and ICAISF 2026, chaired the Intelligent Systems session at the 2026 IEEE World Conference on Applied Intelligence and Computing (AIC 2026), and in September 2026 gave the keynote address “Orchestrating Human-AI Synergy in Educational Ecosystems: From Transparent Collaboration to Sustainable Innovation” at the 6th International Conference on Novel & Intelligent Digital Systems (NiDS 2026), University of West Attica, Athens.

Alongside his academic work, he is a certified ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Associate Auditor (CQI/IRCA), an External Quality Auditor on EU-funded Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education projects, and an Expert Evaluator for the European Research Executive Agency (REA, Horizon Europe) and the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA, Erasmus+). In October 2026 he was admitted to the reserve list of the European Data Protection Board’s Support Pool of Experts for technical expertise in new technologies and information security; experts on the list work on a project basis, and he is not an EDPB employee and has not been offered a contract. In the same month he was included, as an academic expert in the technical and technological sciences, on the List of Experts from which Montenegro’s Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education appoints its panels for the accreditation of study programmes and the reaccreditation of higher-education institutions. He holds the PMP, along with the PM² Essentials and PM² Basic certifications in the European Commission’s project-management methodology. He is fluent in English (IELTS Academic overall band 8.0/9.0, CEFR C1).