Data science, data analytics, big data, data management, data mining, data warehousing, health informatics, population health, primary healthcare optimization and transformation, machine learning

Dr M. Akhtar Ali – BSc, MSc, PhD. Dr Ali joined Northumbria University in August 2000 as a lecturer and then subsequently, within a year, he got promoted to senior lecturer, which means that he served Northumbria University and the Department of Computer and Information Sciences for more than 20 years. He has extensive experience in teaching, research, and development in the field of database systems, data integration, database migration, query optimisation, data warehousing, materialized views, and data mining.

On the research and enterprise front, previously Dr Ali worked on a KTP project in the area of geographical information systems in collaboration with Atlantic Geomatics, Cumbria, for the Government of Gibraltar. Recently, he worked on a two-year KTP project at Corbridge Medical Group to develop a new General Practice service delivery model informed by data mining to predict population needs and consequently redesigned processes and workforce focus. He has extensive experience of supervising BSc, MSc, and PhD students & projects in computing and information sciences.

On the teaching and administration front, Dr Ali has over 20 years of experience of teaching and learning at Northumbria University, three years of teaching/tutoring/demonstrator experience at Manchester University, and three years of teaching/tutoring/trainer experience in Pakistan before he arrived in the UK in September 1997 as a fully funded commonwealth PhD student as Manchester University. He led and contributed to teaching and delivery of numerous modules to undergraduate and postgraduate students in full-time, part-time, on-campus, at distance, and now online, e.g., Principles of Data Science, Database Modelling, Advanced Databases, Relational Databases, Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, Data Warehousing, Research Methods, Software and Data Modelling, Application Design and Development.

In recent years, Dr Ali developed MSc Information Science (with Data Analytics) programme, which ran for the first time in September 2016. In 2019, he developed a new specialist programme: MSc Data Science, which ran for the first time in September 2020 and again in January 2021, with a sizeable student body.

Recent Publications