ACU Researcher

Dr Mahmoud Bekhit

Lecturer
Faculty of Law and Business, Peter Faber Business School

Areas of expertise: cyber security; artificial intelligence and machine learning; computer networks and network function virtualisation; secure IoT and data reduction; computing and cyber security education

Phone: +61(2) 9739 2354

Email: [email protected]

Location: ACU North Sydney Campus

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: HDR Supervisor (Full)

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-8115-4233

ORCID link: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8115-4233

Mahmoud Bekhit is a Lecturer in Information Technology in the Peter Faber Business School, where he teaches and leads curriculum across cyber security, computer networks, data science and machine learning. He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney (2020), where his thesis addressed resource allocation and optimal scheduling of virtual network functions in software-defined networks. He holds full ACU Higher Degree Research supervisor accreditation.

His research sits at the point where artificial intelligence meets the security and performance of connected systems. Current work spans AI-driven cyber defence, including dual-agent large language model frameworks for safe automated assessment in security education; the security of autonomous vehicles; encryption of health data in hybrid-cloud environments; multi-objective optimisation for network function virtualisation; and data-reduction and prediction methods for Internet of Things and underwater sensor networks. A parallel stream applies machine and deep learning to prediction and forecasting problems, from electric-vehicle charging load and bike-sharing demand to credit card fraud detection and renewable-energy generation.

He has published several peer-reviewed outputs since 2015 until present between journal articles, conference papers and book chapters with majority of them indexed in Scopus.

Mahmoud has been awarded competitive research funding across several schemes, in Australia and internationally. These include an Australian Government Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program grant for a gamified robotics outreach program that received national ABC News coverage, and an award from the King Salman Center for Disability Research for privacy-preserving AI that protects people with cognitive disabilities from social-engineering attacks.

Alongside his research, he has contributed to Australian Computer Society accreditation of ACU’s new Bachelor of Business across its Information Technology, Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence majors, and to the successful ACS re-accreditation of the BIT, MIT and BIT–BBA double degree. He established the ACU Cisco Laboratory, has served as National Lecturer in Charge (Unit Leader) across five campuses, and is a named ACU Teaching Champion. Before joining ACU he was Head of the Information Technology Discipline at Kent Institute Australia and, earlier, an academic tutor and ICT researcher in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney.

Website

ORCID

Google Scholar

LinkedIn

Select publications

• Bekhit, M., Rashed, E. A., Othman, W., & Hussain, W. (2026). Twin Minds in Cyber-Defense: A Dual-Agent Framework for Safe Automated Assessment in Security Education. 2026 23rd International Learning and Technology Conference (L&T), IEEE, 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1109/LT68265.2026.11592534

• Aleassa, O., Bekhit, M., Hussain, W., & Fattah, I. M. R. (2026). Harnessing AI-driven large language models (LLMs) for enhanced forecasting and optimisation of wind and solar energy generation and load demand profiles. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 239, 117171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2026.117171

• Bekhit, M., Salah, A., Alrawahi, A. S., Attia, T., Ali, A., Eldesouky, E., & Fathalla, A. (2025). MoCap-Impute: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Comparative Analysis of Imputation Methods for IMU-Based Motion Capture Data. Information, 16(10), 851. https://doi.org/10.3390/info16100851

• Bekhit, M., Hussain, W., Bello, A., Lestari, N. I., & Fathalla, A. (2025). Leveraging Category-Specific Features and Geographic Context for Enhanced Fraud Detection. Innovations in Computing Research (ICR’25), LNNS 1487, Springer, 84–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-95652-2_8

• Eldesouky, E., Fathalla, A., Bekhit, M., & Salah, A. (2025). CLEVER: A Novel Approach for Improving EV Charging Duration and Load Predictions Using Curriculum Learning Approach. IEEE Access, 13, 153263–153280. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3604342

• Kumar, M. D., Bello, A., Kousar, S., Lal, S. G., & Bekhit, M. (2025). Enhancing Autonomous Vehicles Security: A Survey on GAT, Neural Networks, and Reinforcement Learning in AI-Driven Defense. Advances in Computing Research (ACR’25), LNNS 1346, Springer, 320–330. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-87647-9_28

• Adhikari, S., Alsadoon, A., Bekhit, M., Jerew, O. D., Siddiqi, M., & Ali, A. (2024). Optimizing Real-Time Video Transmission for Surgical Tele-Education Through ERV Algorithm. IEEE Access, 12, 98707–98722. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3422093

• Shrestha, P., Ampani, R., Bekhit, M., Abbasi, D. F., Alsadoon, A., & Prasad, P. W. C. (2023). Data Security in Hybrid Cloud Computing Using AES Encryption for Health Sector Organization. Innovative Technologies in Intelligent Systems and Industrial Applications, LNEE 1029, Springer, 155–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29078-7_15

• Bekhit, M., Fathalla, A., Eldesouky, E., & Salah, A. (2023). Multi-objective VNF Placement Optimization with NSGA-III. Advances in Computing Research (ACR’23), LNNS 700, Springer, 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33743-7_39

• Eldesouky, E., Bekhit, M., Fathalla, A., Salah, A., & Ali, A. (2021). A Robust UWSN Handover Prediction System Using Ensemble Learning. Sensors, 21(17), 5777. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21175777

• Gamal (Bekhit), M., Jafarizadeh, S., Abolhasan, M., Lipman, J., & Ni, W. (2019). Mapping and Scheduling for Non-Uniform Arrival of Virtual Network Function (VNF) Requests. 2019 IEEE 90th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2019-Fall), IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VTCFall.2019.8891197

Projects

• 2026. Saudi Neuro-Cyber Shield: privacy-preserving AI protecting people with cognitive disabilities from social-engineering attacks (150,000 SAR, approximately AUD $60,000). Funded by the King Salman Center for Disability Research.

• 2024–2025. Pathway to Possibilities through Empowering Under-Represented Students with Interactive Gamified Robotics Programming (AUD $122,868). Funded by the Australian Government Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP). Received national ABC News coverage.

• 2024. International Collaboration Grant (~AUD $70,000), ranked first of twenty-four submissions. Funded by the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Oman.

• 2024. Applied AI for Work-Integrated Learning placement matching (AUD $5,000). Funded by the ACU Research Discovery Grant scheme.

• 2024. AI-enabled matching for Work-Integrated Learning (AUD $4,000). Funded by the ACU Early Career Researcher Grant scheme.

• Household electricity consumption prediction using different predictive models (AUD $20,000). Funded by Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University.

Awards

• 2025 — ACU Teaching Champion

• 2024 — ACU Enterprise Clinic Pitch Award, for a pitch demonstrating strong commercial potential

• 2023 — Research Award, University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Ibri, for “Real-Time and Automatic System for Performance Evaluation of Karate Skills Using Motion Capture Sensors and Continuous Wavelet Transform”

• 2016–2020 — International Research Scholarship (IRS) and UTS President’s Scholarship (UTSP), University of Technology Sydney

• 2016–2020 — Faculty of Engineering and IT top-up scholarship, Vice-Chancellor Conference Scholarship, and FEIT Post-Thesis Publication award, University of Technology Sydney

• 2012–2015 — China Scholarship Council fully funded Master’s scholarship

Appointments and Affiliations

• Member — Australian Computer Society (ACS)

• Programme committee member — six international conferences

• Cisco Certified Network Instructor; Cisco Networking Academy instructor

• Session chair — International Association of Jesuit Business Schools conference (two sessions)