Dr Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar is Chief Research Officer at the Secure Systems Research Centre at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a cutting-edge UAE-based scientific research Centre and Adjunct Research Professor at Khalifa University. In this role, he is responsible for carrying out advanced research that is driving end-to-end security and resilience in cyber physical and autonomous systems of systems (swarm of drones). These includes secure technologies in silicon, edge and mobile and cloud platforms working with open-source ecosystems (Dronecode, RISC-V, Linux, Apache, ROS) and research institutions across USA, Europe, and UAE.

Thakkar’s career is punctuated by industry firsts and successes that have strengthened revenue, profit, and competitive advantage for Fortune 500 firms, as well as reach labs, start-ups, and entrepreneurial divisions Thakkar is a hands-on leader with an invaluable blend of strategy development and tactical execution; an implementer and dedicated “doer” who delivers corporate vision by building, leading, mentoring, and supporting highly effective, diverse, and collaborative advanced development, engineering/software engineering teams across different geographies.

Before taking on his current role, Thakkar was Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President of Engineering and Technology at the company, now Digital14, a cyber- security leader based in the UAE. In this capacity, he was instrumental in developing an engineering organization of 500 people from a start-up team in four geographical locations, delivering two generations of innovative secure smartphones and applications, and a secure VPN appliance that contributed significantly to the company’s annual revenue.

In prior roles, he served as Chief Solutions Architect at Qualcomm Data Technologies, and as the Chief Technology Officer in the Personal Computing Group and as Vice President and Fellow at HP’s Emerging Computing Lab. Earlier in his career, Ticky Thakkar completed 21 years at INTEL Corporation in roles including INTEL Fellow and Chief Systems Architect – Mobile Systems Technologies. Thakkar holds a PhD and an MSc, both in Computer Science, from the University of Manchester. He also earned a BSc in Computer Science and Statistics from University College London. He holds 87 patents and has published 33 papers and over 5000 citations in Google Scholar