Ranwa Al Mallah

My current research goal is to develop multidisciplinary, secure and highly intelligent solutions for the planning, design and operation of cyber physical systems running on critical infrastructure such as the road transport network, power grids, systems in smart cities, smart vehicles and systems in aviation. My methodologies involve Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning, big data analytics, data mining and game/decision theories. At the same time, those ML techniques are susceptible to new attacks. To this end, I am interested in AI  in cybersecurity from the basics to advanced and adjacent topics of cybersecurity of AI. The topics include: Basic ML for cybersecurity; adversarial AI, attacks (evasion, white/black box, poisoning attacks) and adversarial examples in security applications; defenses against adversarial AI; anti adversarial AI. 

Industry

Consultant for meshMD Inc. – Toronto, Ontario (August 2020-Present)

meshMD is a company that offers technology in the pharmaceutical industry. They plan to use blockchain to create a specific portal which will allow for the enrolment into a specialty care program for each of the viable hepatitis C therapies on the market. We provide consultation to solve technical issues related to blockchain for streamlining reimbursement navigation and prescribing.

Research Assistant at the SecSI Security Lab - Polytechnique Montréal – Montréal, Québec  (August 2018 - January 2020)

I conducted Research on the safety and security of cyber-physical systems, road traffic control systems, micro-grids and air traffic control. We experimented with attacks on CPS systems with reinforcement learning and defenses with game theory. I also co-supervised undergraduate and graduate students of Professor José Fernandez.  I was leading internal discussion sessions and reading groups and organising a series of seminars in which students formally present their own research results. I assisted in writing and submitting research funding proposals and applications. 

R&D Engineer at GENINOV Group Inc. (October 2008 - December 2013)

I was the project manager under the Telecommunications and Networks division. I was responsible of the deployment and interconnection at the national level of the Network Operating Center and the offices of the General Administration of Customs of the Republic of Haiti. I was responsible of the design, modeling and development of  edge security systems of corporate networks. I managed the progress of the consulting firm's bid to requests for proposals for telecommunication and computer projects. 

Sales Engineer at Voysis IP Solutions (September 2003 - September 2005)

I was responsible of the design and implemetation for upgrades of phone systems and deployments of VoIP telephony solutions in businesses or hotels. I participated in the writing of submissions and I formulated a structured sales strategy, Business Solution Engineering for the company.

Teaching

Course instructor, lab demonstrator and lab instructor -  Polytechnique Montréal (December 2016 – December 2020)

• Course: Procedural programming in MATLAB - Introducing and explaining programming concepts, guiding large number of students and preparing exams.

• Course: Fixed/mobile network security and Advanced concepts in computer security

• Course: Introduction to computer engineering

• Practical sessions in procedural programming: Guiding students during sessions, preparing and evaluating assignments.

• REFEREED JOURNALS

• · Garrett McDonald, Li Li, Ranwa Al Mallah. (2024). "Finding the Optimal Security Policies for Autonomous Cyber Operations With Competitive Reinforcement Learning." IEEE Access, vol. 12, pp. 120292-120305, 2024, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3446310.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, David Lopez, Godwin Badu-Marfo, Bilal Farooq. (2023). "Untargeted Poisoning Attack Detection in Federated Learning via Behavior Attestation." IEEE Access.  https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.10904

• · Daniel Opoku Mensah, Godwin Badu-Marfo, Ranwa Al Mallah, Bilal Farooq. (2023). " An Ensemble Federated Learning Framework for Privacy-by-Design Mobility Behaviour Inference in Smart Cities." SCS, Sustainable Cities and Society, 2023, 104703.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, Talal Halabi, Bilal Farooq. (2023) "Resilience-by-design in Adaptive Multi-Agent Traffic Control Systems." ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, TOPS, 26(3), 1-27.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, Godwin Badu-Marfo, Bilal Farooq. (2021). "On the Initial Behavior Monitoring Issues in Federated Learning." IEEE Access, 9, 161046-161054.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, David Lopez, Bilal Farooq. (2021). "Cyber-Security Risk Assessment Framework for Blockchains in Smart Mobility." IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2, 294-311. [Impact Factor 3.269]

• · Talal Halabi, Omar Abdel Wahab, Ranwa Al Mallah, Zulkernine, Mohammad. (2020). "Protecting The Internet of Vehicles against Advanced Persistent Threats: A Bayesian Stackelberg Game." IEEE Transactions on Reliability, 70(3), 970-985. [Impact Factor 3.177]

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, Alejandro Quintero, Bilal Farooq. (2020). "Prediction of traffic flow via connected vehicles." IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 21(1), 264-277. [Impact Factor 5.112]

• ·  Ranwa Al Mallah*, Bilal Farooq, Alejandro Quintero. (2019). "Cooperative Evaluation of the Cause of Urban Traffic Congestion via Connected Vehicles." IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation System 21(1), 59-67. [Impact Factor 6.319]

• ·  Ranwa Al Mallah*, Bilal Farooq, Alejandro Quintero. (2016). "Distributed Classification of Urban Congestion Using VANET." IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 18 (9), 2435-2442. [Impact Factor 6.319]

• REFEREED CONFERENCES

• · Ranwa Al Mallah* and Alejandro Quintero. (2025) "Adversarial Threats and Defense Mechanisms in Machine Learning-Based SQL Injection Detection: A Security Analysis". International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communication (ICNC2025). Hawaii, USA, February 17–20.

• · Mohammad Alja'Afreh, Omar Musa Hasan, Ranwa Al Mallah* and Ali Karime. (2024) " Blockchain-Driven Networking and Communications in the Metaverse". The Second International Workshop on Blockchain Solutions (IWBS 2024). Dubai, UAE, November 26–29.

• · Kiernan Broda-Milian, Hanane Dagdougi, Ranwa Al Mallah. (2024) "The Bifurcation Method: White-Box Observation Perturbation Attacks on Reinforcement Learning Agents on a Cyber Physical Power System". International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC). Miyazaki, Japan, September 20-23.

• · Alexandre Légère, Li Li, François Rivest and Ranwa Al Mallah. (2024) " Training Environments for Reinforcement Learning Cybersecurity Agents". International Conference on Computing, Internet of Things (ICCIMS’24). Ottawa, Canada. July 29-31.

• · Godwin Badu Marfo, Ranwa Al Mallah and Bilal Farooq. (2024) "Defense via Behavior Attestation against Attacks in Connected and Automated Vehicles based Federated Learning Systems". IEEE 99th Vehicular Technology Conference: VTC2024-Spring, Singapore. 24-27 June 2024.

• · Mohammad Alja'Afreh, Ranwa Al Mallah*, Ali Karime and Abdulmotaleb El Saddik. (2023) "Cybersecurity in the Metaverse: Challenges and Approaches". International Conference on Intelligent Metaverse Technologies & Applications (iMETA2023), Tartu, Estonia. 18-20 September 2023.

• · Jacob Wiebe, Ranwa Al Mallah*, Li Li. (2023) "Learning Cyber Defence Tactics from Scratch with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning". Second International Workshop on Adaptive Cyber Defense, ACD. Florida, USA. 17-18 August 2023.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, David Lopez, Bilal Farooq. (2023) "Adapting Detection in Blockchain-enabled Federated Learning for IoT Networks." ICECCME’23, 3nd International Conference on Electrical, Computer, Communications and Mechatronics Engineering. Tenerife, Spain. 19 – 21 Jul 2023.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, David López and Talal Halabi. (2022). "Blockchain-enabled Efficient and Secure Federated Learning in IoT and Edge Computing Networks." ICNC’20, International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications. Honolulu, Hawaï, USA. 20-22 Feb 2023.

• · Antonio Dominguez, José M. Fernandez, Ranwa Al-Mallah, Cristina Alcaraz, and Nicolas Saunier. (2022). "Reinforcement-Learning-based Attack on Adaptive Traffic Control Systems." Transportation Research Board Repository.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, David Lopez. (2022) "Blockchain-based Monitoring for Poison Attack Detection in Decentralized Federated Learning." ICECCME’22, 2nd International Conference on Electrical, Computer, Communications and Mechatronics Engineering. Malé, Maldives. 16-18 November 2022.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, Talal Halabi, Mohammad Alja’Afreh, Ali Karime. (2022). "Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity in IoT-enabled Avionics: Challenges and Solutions." IEEE WFIoT2022, IEEE 8th World Forum on Internet of Things, Sustainability and the Internet of Things. Yokohama, Japon. 26 October – 11 November 2022.

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, Godwin Badu-Marfo, Bilal Farooq. (2021). "Cybersecurity Threats in Connected and Automated Vehicles based Federated Learning Systems." In proceedings of  IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium. 11-17 July 2021 [Impact Factor 2.91]  

• · Ranwa Al Mallah*, Bilal Farooq. (2020). "Actor-based Risk Analysis for Blockchains in Smart Mobility." In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains for Distributed Systems@Mobicom. London, UK. 25 September 2020. [Acceptance Rate 28%]

• · Christopher Neal, Ranwa Al Mallah, Jose Fernandez, and Andrea Lodi. (2020). "Analyzing the Resiliency of Microgrid Control Algorithms Against Malicious Input." In 2020 IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering CCECE. London, Ontario, Canada. August 30 - September 2, 2020. [Acceptance Rate 25%]

• · Atefeh Meshinchi, Ranwa Al Mallah*, Alejandro Quintero. "QoS-Aware  Adaptive  Resource  Allocation  Framework  in  the  Integrated SDN  Transport  and  IoT." In proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies UBICOMM 2020. Nice, France. 25-29 October 2020.

• ·  Atefeh Meshinchi, Ranwa Al Mallah*, Alejandro Quintero.  "Status-aware  and  SLA-aware  QoS  Routing  Model  For  SDN  Transport Network." In proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies UBICOMM 2020. Nice, France. 25-29 Oct. 2020.**

• · Ranwa Al Mallah, Bilal Farooq, Alejandro Quintero. (2009). "A Light-Weight Service Discovery Protocol for Ad-Hoc Networks." Journal of Computer Science 5(4):330-7

• · Faizan Contractor, Li Li, Ranwa Al Mallah. " Learning to Communicate in Cooperative MARL for Autonomous Cyber Operations ", under review in Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, TDSC.

• · "Defense via Behavior Attestation against Attacks in Connected and Automated Vehicles based Federated Learning Systems Under-review in IV2025 Godwin Badu-Marfo, Daniel Opoku Mensah, Ranwa Al Mallah, Bilal Farooq.

• · "Reinforcement Learning based cyber attack on Ridehailing systems." Roderick Zhang, Mehdi Meshkani, Ranwa Al Mallah, Bilal Farooq.

• ·        ICMLC 2024: International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Miyazaki, Japan, September 2024.

• o   Presentation of the paper titled: "The Bifurcation Method: White-Box Observation Perturbation Attacks on Reinforcement Learning Agents on a Cyber Physical Power System."

• ·        IEEE ISC2 2022: 8th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference, Paphos, Cyprus, September 2022.

• o   Presentation of the paper titled: "eFedDNN: Ensemble based Federated Deep Neural Networks for Trajectory Mode Inference."

• ·        Army Technical Staff Officer Program (ATSOP) and the Army Technical Warrant Officer Program (ATWOP), Department of Applied Military Science (AMS), April 2022, April 2023 and April 2024.

• o   Presentation on “Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity".

• ·        TRB annual meeting, Washington, DC, January 2022.

• o   Accepted for presentation at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting: "Reinforcement-Learning-based Attack on Adaptive Traffic Control Systems."

• o   Accepted for presentation at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting: "Privacy-by-Design Mode Inference using Ensemble-Based Federated Deep Neural Networks on Heterogeneous Smartphone GPS Trajectories."

• ·        IV21: 32nd IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, Nagoya, Japan, July 2021.

• o   Presentation of the paper titled: "Cybersecurity Threats in Connected and Automated Vehicles based Federated Learning Systems."

• RSI-ASIMM Cybersecurity Association, April 17th 2019: Presentation on the Security of Cyber Physical Systems 

• The 2020 Smart Freight Symposium, November 27th 2020: Blockchain in Urban Mobility