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Chitra Balakrishna, Ph.D. MBCS, SFHEA , CEH is an academic, author, futuristic technology and open source enthusiast with over 19 years of experience spanning across academia and industry in the areas of Cyber Security, Data Networking, Mobile Communications,Technologies and Applications.
She has been instrumental in acquiring research income of over £2 million as a co-investigator or principal investigator from funding sources such as ERDF, Innovate UK, HEA, EPSRC and British Council. She has over 40 academic publications to her credit in international journals and conference proceedings. In addition, she has authored a highly cited book on 'IP Multimedia Subsystem ' by John Wiley publications.
She is currently the Program Leader for Cyber Security at Open University. She has previously held position of program leader for Networking, Security and Forensics at Edge Hill University and Head of Networks and Services with Centre of Excellence for Mobile Applications and Services. During her tenure as an academic member of staff at the University of South Wales, she set up an open source next-generation networking (NGN) lab in collaboration with industrial partners such as Orange and France Telecom. She is a founding member of a very successful IEEE conference on Next-Generation Applications, Technologies and services which is in its 11th edition and a chair for an IEEE sponsored workshop on Smart Cities for 5 years.
In 2017, she secured a £80K grant from HEA for a project on gamification of cyber security education. The outcomes are maintained at a public website -http://www.cyberedge.uk. She currently holds a £40K GSIKE UK-Gulf partnership fund with University of Bahrain.
Her current research interests include aspects of security within the context of smart cities, eHealth and Internet of Things. She has a keen interest in the pedagogical aspects of cyber security, particularly in gamification of cyber security education.
Areas of Expertise
Publications
Books
Academic Tutorials
Tutorial as part of IEEE NGMAST 2010, Aman, titled Next-Generation Service Delivery Platforms
Tutorial as part of the IEEE NGMAST 2009, titled IMS – A Service Centric View http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/NGMAST09/NGMAST09_programme_final.htm
Editorials
Co-editor of Proceedings of the IEEE co-sponsored conference on Next-Generation Mobile Applications Services and Technology [NGMAST] 2008 -2015
Experiments in Cyber Security Education
Research Funding
Gamified Intelligent Cyber Aptitude and Skills Training (GICAST) , Nesta, (1st April 2020 - 31st march 2021), Investigator(s): Dr. C Balakrishna and Dr P.Charlton. Total Value: £240000 (£240K)
A Gamified Intelligent Environment for Training and Assessing Cyber Security Behaviour, Cyber ASAP Program, Innovate UK (starting 1st April 2019 - 31st July 2019) Investigator(s): Dr. C Balakrishna and Dr P.Charlton, Prof. Shailey Manukha Total Value: £28,000(£28K)
Keynotes and Engagement with Wider Community
Awards & Recognitions
External Examiner Appointments
Swansea Metropolitan University ( 2012-2014)
University of Staffordshire ( 2016-2019)
Liverpool John Moore's University ( 2018-2022)
The UK-Gulf Institutional Links programe and partnership with University of Bahrain. ( 2017-2019)
Visiting Appointments
Consumer Health Care: Current Trends in Consumer Health Monitoring (2018-01)
Garge, Gopi Krishna; Balakrishna, Chitra and Datta, Soumya Kanti
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 7(1) (pp. 38-46)
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as on-demand QoS enabler for Multimedia Applications in Smart Cities (2019-10-03)
Garge, Gopi Krishna and Balakrishna, Chitra
In : 2018 International Conference on Innovation and Intelligence for Informatics, Computing, and Technologies (3ICT) (18-20 Nov 2018, University of Bahrain)
Challenges of Wearable Health Monitors : A Case study of Foetal ECG Monitor (2019)
Balakrishna, Chitra; Rendon-Morales, Elizabeth; Aviles-Espinosa, Rodrigo; Dore, Henry and Luo, Zhenhua
In : 2019 Global IoT Summit (GIoTS) (17-20 Jun 2019, Aarhus, Denmark)
Cyber Security Challenges of Deploying IoT in Smart Cities for Healthcare Applications (2018)
Alromaihi, Sara; Elmedany, Wael and Balakrishna, Chitra
In : 2018 6th International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud Workshops (FiCloudW) (6-8 Aug 2018, Barcelona, Spain) (pp. 140-145)
Cloud Security Risk Management: A Critical Review (2016)
Damenu, Temesgen Kitaw and Balakrishna, Chitra
In : 2015 9th International Conference on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services and Technologies (9-11 Sep 2015, Cambridge, UK) (pp. 370-375)