Other Considerations
In 2025, he was named by Stanford University on the World's Top 2% Scientists List, recognized for global scholarly impact and interdisciplinary research excellence, and can access his personal page at World’s Top 2% Scientists and World's Top 5% Scientists List for 2025 by Global Innovation Index, recognized for global scholarly impact and interdisciplinary research excellence, and access his personal page at World’s Top 5% Scientist. He has expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Digital Health, Smart Agriculture, and Sustainable Computing. He has earned several non-degree certificates other agricultural, health, and interdisciplinary research certificates, including a Certificate of Human Subject (Protecting Human Research Participants), at the National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, US Department of Health, California, USA, Global Health Certificate (Monitoring & Evaluation Fundamentals), Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA, the Global Health Certificate (Sustainable Development Goals) at Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. Global Health Certificate (Interventions Commonly Accepted as Best Practices), Bloomberg School Of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21205, Baltimore MD 21205, 615 N Wolfe St, Baltimore USA. Global Health Center Certificate (Data Quality) at Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Industrial and Academic Positions
In 2013 to 2014 severed as Community Research Assistant at Plan International, Luweero, Uganda. 2022-2023, as System Administrators (remote) at Pacelabs, Roseville, Minneapolis. 2017-2022 as Ag. Managing Director, Asmaah Charity Organisation, Humanitarian Activities, Uganda; Technical Founder at Ummah Charity Group Uganda, Humanitarian Activities, Kampala, Uganda, 2017-2018; Assistant Data Officer at TechnoServe, Kampala, Uganda. 2017-2018, as Data Analyst at Population Services International (PSI-Uganda), Kampala, Uganda. 2016-2017 as Research Associate at Mercy Corps, Kampala, Uganda. 2016-2017 further severed as Community Data Officer at Programme for Accessible Health Communication (PACE -Uganda), Kampala, Uganda, 2016-2018 as Research Assistant at the Socio-Economic Data Centre (SEDC-Uganda), Prime Minister's Office, Kampala, Uganda, 2014-2017 as Dawa Information Technology Support at Thurayya Islam Media, Kampala, Uganda and 2014-2015 as Information technology Intern at Uganda Police Force (UPF, Naguru), Kampala, Uganda. His notable courses include Mathematics for Computer Engineering, Quantum Computing and Applications, Cyber-Physical System Security, Security Topics in Soft Computing, Internet Security, Selected Topics in Computing, Data Mining and Machine Learning.
Research
The founder and Team Lead at the Dig Connectivity Research Laboratory (DCRLab), an independent research Centre striving to engage in cutting-edge research to design and develop end-to-end secure, reliable, and sustainable solutions and systems in general areas of ecology, health, and technology. Currently, he is the Team Lead at DCRLab. He has published the finding of his research on Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Digital Health, Smart Agriculture, Sustainable Computing developing principled computationally and statistically efficient models and algorithms for various health and ecological bottlenecks. He has published in technological and environmental journals and other peer-reviewed publications and is cited with an H-Index of over 30, with 5,767+ citations in over 6 sole-authored books, 5 co-edited books, 84 journal articles, 200+ book chapters, and 15 IEEE and non-IEEE conference papers.
Selected publications
Shafik, W., Tufail, A., De Silva, L.C. et al. Deep learning technique for plant disease classification and pest detection and model explainability elevating agricultural sustainability. BMC Plant Biology, 25, 1491 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-025-07377-x.
Shafik, W., Tufail, A., Namoun, A., De Silva, L. C., & Apong, R. A. A. H. M. (2023). A systematic literature review on plant disease detection: Motivations, classification techniques, datasets, challenges, and future trends. IEEE Access, 11, 59174-59203. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3284760.
Shafik, W., Tufail, A., Liyanage, C. D. S., & Apong, R. A. A. H. M. (2023). Using a novel convolutional neural network for plant pests detection and disease classification. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5849-5861. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12700.
Shafik, W., Tufail, A., De Silva Liyanage, C., & Apong, R. A. A. H. M. (2024). Using transfer learning-based plant disease classification and detection for sustainable agriculture. BMC Plant Biology, 24(1), 136. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-024-04825-y.
Shafik, W., Tufail, A., Liyanage De Silva, C., & Awg Haji Mohd Apong, R. A. (2025). A novel hybrid inception-xception convolutional neural network for efficient plant disease classification and detection. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 3936. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-82857-y.
Wang, Y., Shafik, W., Seong, J. T., Al Mutairi, A., Mustafa, M. S., & Mouhamed, M. R. (2023). Service delay and optimization of the energy efficiency of a system in fog-enabled smart cities. Alexandria Engineering Journal, 84, 112-125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2023.10.034.
Saleh, R. A., Ghaleb, M., Shafik, W., & ERTUNÇ, H. M. (2024). Efficient white blood cell identification with hybrid inception-xception network. The Journal of Supercomputing, 80(17), 25155-25187. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06405-1.
Alnssyan, B., Ahmad, Z., Malela-Majika, J. C., Seong, J. T., & Shafik, W. (2023). On the identifiability and statistical features of a new distributional approach with reliability applications. AIP Advances, 13(12). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0178555.
Yang, Z., Jianjun, L., Faqiri, H., Shafik, W., Talal Abdulrahman, A., Yusuf, M., & Sharawy, A. M. (2021). Green internet of things and big data application in smart cities development. Complexity, 2021(1), 4922697. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/4922697.
Selected books
Shafik, W. (2026). The Dark Side of AI: Human and Societal Perspective. Springer, Singapore. https://link.springer.com/book/9789819672981.
Shafik, W. (2026). Artificial Intelligence for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa. Chapman & Hall, Taylor & Francis. https://shorturl.at/egABe.
Shafik, W. (2026). Textbook of Green Growth and Technology: Balancing Ecology, Economy, and Equity. Sustainable Development and Biodiversity. Springer Singapore.https://link.springer.com/book/9789819536313.
Shafik, W. (2025). Global Sustainable Transition with Inclusion: A Focus on the People with Disabilities and the Marginalized. Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://link.springer.com/book/9789819665563.
Shafik, W. (2025). Next-Gen Solutions for Sustainable Agronomy: Application, Technologies, and Management. Physical Sciences. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, United Kingdom. https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-4965-0.
Shafik, W. (2025). Factoring Technology in Global Sustainability: A Focus on the Sustainable Development Goals. Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://link.springer.com/book/9789819672981.
Conferences
Wasswa has attended several conferences such as;
2025 22nd International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology (ECTI-CON), 20-23 May 2025, Bangkok, Thailand
IST-Africa 2024 Conference (IST-Africa), 20-24 May 2024, Dublin, Ireland
2023 8th International Conference on Information Technology and Digital Applications (ICITDA), 17-18 November 2023, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
2020 8th Iranian Joint Congress on Fuzzy and Intelligent Systems (CFIS), 02-04 September 2020, Mashhad, Iran
2019 27th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE), 30 April 2019, Yazd, Iran
2019 Smart Grid Conference (SGC), 18-19 December 2019, Tehran, Iran
2019 5th International Conference on Web Research (ICWR), 24-25 April 2019, Tehran, Iran