Education

• 2022–2025

  A Ph.D. student in the National Ph.D. Program in Cybersecurity, jointly enrolled at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and the Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy.
  Project title: “Robust DDoS Attack Detection with Artificial Intelligence”

• March 2018
  M.Sc. in Information Technology, University of Gondar
  Thesis Title: “A Collaborative Knowledge-Based System with a Hybrid Machine Learning Approach”
• July 2013
  B.Sc. in Information Technology, Adama Science and Technology University, Ethiopia
  Project Title: “Web-based Digital Library System with Multi-User Access and Role Management”

Employment History

• Visiting Researcher, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia (July – Sep 2023)
  – Collaborated on AI-driven IoT security research, focusing on developing federated learning models for scalable intrusion detection.
• Lecturer, University of Gondar, Ethiopia (2014 – 2022)
  – Taught courses in Artificial Intelligence, System and Network Administration, Advanced Database Systems, and Data Mining.
  – Engaged in research, technology transfer projects, and community services.
  – Supervised undergraduate and graduate theses.
  – Coordinated educational quality assurance initiatives for the College of Informatics.
• Assistant Lecturer, Gendawuha TVET College, Ethiopia (2009 – 2010)
  – Instructed courses in Data Science and System Administration, delivering engaging lectures and hands-on lab sessions.
  – Provided academic support and mentoring to students, including tutoring and guidance on projects and assignments.

Awards and Scholarships

• National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) Scholarship, funded by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR), Italy, under the European Union’s NextGenerationEU program (2022 – Present)
  – Awarded full PhD scholarship for cybersecurity research.
  – Focus on AI in cybersecurity and data protection in emerging scenarios.

Research Projects

• Digital Disaster Recovery and Rehabilitation Project Coordinator (10/03/2021 – 28/04/2022)
• Google Impact Amplifier: Online Safety Project (2020 – 2021)
• Utilizing Amharic-based Chatbot Decision Support Systems for Farmers in Ethiopia (09/11/2018 – 18/07/2019)
  – Designed and implemented an Amharic-language chatbot to support decision-making for Ethiopian farmers.
  – Enhanced agricultural productivity by providing real-time guidance on crop selection and farming techniques.

Professional Activities and Academic Service

• Workshops Organizer
  – Organized a training seminar for research data stewardship and e-infrastructures in Ethiopia. The event was organized in collaboration with the University Library and Archive Service of the University of Vienna. (03/08/2018 – 17/08/2018, Gondar, Ethiopia)
  – Data Cleaning in OpenRefine, Data Analysis and Visualization in R and RStudio (11/03/2019 – 13/03/2019, Gondar, Ethiopia)

• Reviewer (Journals)

  – Computers & Security, Elsevier
  – Information Security Journal, Web of Science

• Reviewer (Conferences)

  – 2023 International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Development for Africa (ICT4DA)
  – Deep Learning IndabaX Conference, 2022, University of Gondar.

• Technical Program Committee (TPC) Member
  – National conference on digital transformation for holistic and inclusive development, 2022
  – Open standards for web servers initiative, Open Internet standards and protocols, Internet Society, April 12-23, 2021

• Memberships

  – IEEE Graduate Student member
  – IEEE Young Professionals
  – IEEE Communications Society
  – IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
  – Doctoral Student member of the Association for Information Systems (AIS)
  – Ethiopian Cybersecurity Association (ECySA)

Publications

Journal Articles

• MB Anley, A Genovese, D Agostinello, V Piuri, “Robust DDoS attack detection with adaptive transfer learning”, Computers & Security, volume 144, DOI: , 2024, Elsevier.

International Conferences

• MB Anley, O Ekpo, TMH Gedara, “Cybersecurity Assessment of Digital Twin in Smart Grids”, ITASEC 2024: The Italian Conference on CyberSecurity, 2024, DOI: .
• MB Anley, GS Negashe, AY Ayalew, “Opinion Mining of Tourists’ Sentiments: Towards a Comprehensive Service Improvement of Tourism Industry”, 2023 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Virtual Environments for Measurement Systems and Applications (CIVEMSA), 2023, pp. 3312-3319, DOI: .
• MB Anley, RB Awgichew, “Machine Learning Approach for Green Usage of Computing Devices”, 2nd Deep Learning Indaba-X Ethiopia Conference, 2021.
• MB Anley and AA Zegeye, “Accessibility of Artificial Intelligent Technologies for Persons with Disabilities and the Legal Requirements: Assessing the Situation in Ethiopia [Poster]”, NeurIPS 2021 Black in AI Workshop, https://storage.googleapis.com/indaba-pu, 2021.
• MB Anley, TB Tesema, “A collaborative approach to build a KBS for crop selection: Combining experts knowledge and machine learning knowledge discovery”, 2nd Information and Communication Technology for Development for Africa, ICT4DA 2019, Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1026. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26630-1 8

Presentations in National and International Conferences

• “Cybersecurity Assessment of Digital Twin in Smart Grids”, 8th Italian Conference on Cyber Security (ITASEC 2024) Salerno, Italy, April 8-12, 2024.
• “Opinion Mining of Tourists’ Sentiments: Towards a Comprehensive Service Improvement of Tourism Industry”, 2023 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence & Virtual Environments for Measurements Systems and Applications (CIVEMSA 2023), Virtual, June 12, 2023.
• “Machine Learning Approach for Green Usage of Computing Devices”, 2nd Deep Learning Indaba X 2021 conference, Adama, Ethiopia, January 27-29, 2022.
• “Accessibility of Artificial Intelligent Technologies for Persons with Disabilities [Poster]”, 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Black in AI Workshop, Virtual, December 6-14, 2021.
• “A Collaborative Approach to Build a KBS for Crop Selection: Combining Experts Knowledge and Machine Learning Knowledge Discovery”, 2nd International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Development for Africa (ICT4DA 2019), Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, May 28-30, 2019.

Skills, Certifications, and Languages

Skills

• Programming Languages: Python, C++, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, MySQL
• Frameworks and Tools: TensorFlow, Keras, Flower Framework, SQL, Wireshark, Nmap, Kali Linux, Pilar Risk Analysis Tool
• Other Skills: Machine Learning, Federated Learning, Cybersecurity, Data Poisoning Attack Detection, Intrusion Detection

Certifications

• Hands-on Penetration Testing with Netcat – EC-Council (07th Nov 2023)
• Deep Web and Cybersecurity – EC-Council (10th Nov 2023)
• CISCO Certified Network Associate (CCNA)
• Machine Learning for Data Science, Columbia University, 2022, [online]
• Big Data Analytics IIOE, UNESCO

Languages

• Amharic: (Native)
• English: (Proficient)
• Italian: (Basic)