Dr. Nur Zincir‑Heywood
Dean & Distinguished Research Professor
I am the Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science and a Distinguished Research Professor at Dalhousie University, in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. My research sits at the intersection of computer networks, cyber security, and artificial intelligence — I design and study intelligent, autonomous systems that help networks, services, and the people who depend on them stay resilient.
Before becoming Dean, I served as Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty. I've had the privilege of supervising more than 100 graduate students and researchers to completion, and working with wonderful students and collaborators on over 250 peer-reviewed papers along the way.
I'm also an author and editor of several books in my field — including Communication Networks and Service Management in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and the Foundations and Practice of Security proceedings volumes — listed on my Goodreads author page.
01Recent highlights
Dean, Faculty of Computer Science
Named Dean for a three-year term beginning July 1, 2026, following her time as Associate Dean of Research — recognizing her research leadership, administrative experience, and commitment to an inclusive, principled Faculty culture.
NSERC Board of Governors & Executive Committee
Appointed to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada's Board of Governors in January 2025, and now serves on its Executive Committee, helping guide national research funding priorities.
Associate Editor-in-Chief, IEEE TNSM
Serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, and as Associate Editor for the Springer Journal of Network and Systems Management and the Wiley International Journal of Network Management.
Dalhousie Distinguished Research Professor
Named a Distinguished Research Professor in recognition of sustained contributions to research and scholarship — a title she continues to hold as Dean.
$16.6M+ in research funding
Secured research funding from NSERC, Mitacs, the Department of National Defence, the EU's ITEA programme, and industry partners — supporting a steady stream of work on cyber resilience, autonomous cyber operations, and machine learning for networks and systems.
02Dalhousie career
03Selected recent publications
Full, continually updated bibliography: Google Scholar · DBLP
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“Comprehensive Host-Based Malicious Behaviour Detection in VANETs.”
Journal of Network and Systems Management, 2026 -
“IoT Botnet Detection with Drift-Aligned Learning and DNS-Based C2 Identification.”
CNSM 2025 -
“Unsupervised Anomaly Detection for Wi-Fi Networks using RFFI.”
CNSM 2025 -
“Lightweight Early-Warning Bot Detection on X (Twitter): Temporal Patterns and Entropy Insights.”
COMPSAC 2025 -
“SQL-GENIE: SQL Protection using Generative Modeling for Anomaly Detection against Injection and Evolved Adversarial Attacks.”
COMPSAC 2025 -
“Large Language Models and Unsupervised Feature Learning: Implications for Log Analysis.”
Annals of Telecommunications, 2024
This is a short, recent selection from a career total of 250+ peer-reviewed papers.
04Beyond the office
In 2008 I founded the Women in Technology Society (WiTS), and I'm still its founding chair today. That work earned Digital Nova Scotia's Women Leaders in the Digital Economy Award in 2017, and in March 2025 WiTS launched the inaugural Dr. Nur Zincir‑Heywood Trailblazer Award in my name — read more in Dal News' “A trailblazer for women at Dal and beyond”.
I love tuning in to CBC Information Morning — some mornings I've even joined the conversation myself, talking about online privacy and cyber security.
You can also watch a short video about my research, or my Fall 2014 Convocation address.
05Connect
6050 University Avenue, Halifax, NS