Dr. Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar

Dr. Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar is the Chief Researcher at the Secure Systems Research Centre of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a cutting-edge scientific research center based in the United Arab Emirates. He also serves as an Adjunct Research Professor at Khalifa University. In his current role, Dr. Thakkar leads advanced research initiatives focused on zero-trust end-to-end security, resilience, and safety in cyber-physical and autonomous systems platforms—such as swarms of drones—leveraging generative AI and large language models (LLMs).

Under his leadership, his team has successfully demonstrated and commercialized a system integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and human first responders. This integrated system operates cohesively with flight and mission operations, utilizing a zero-trust communication shield over mesh and long-range connectivity. Additionally, his team has developed zero-trust mobile platforms featuring secure applications for smartphones and laptops, which are currently in the commercialization phase.

Dr. Thakkar's work extends to embedding zero-trust security technologies in silicon, edge, mobile, and cloud platforms. He collaborates with open-source ecosystems such as Dronecode, RISC-V, Linux, Apache, and ROS, and partners with research institutions across the USA, Europe, and the UAE.

Before joining TII, Dr. Thakkar was the Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President of Engineering and Technology at a leading UAE-based cybersecurity company, where he played a pivotal role in productizing secure smartphones and an enterprise VPN appliance. His previous positions include Chief Solutions Architect at Qualcomm Data Technologies and Chief Technology Officer in the Personal Computing Group, as well as Vice President and Fellow at HP's Emerging Computing Lab. Earlier in his career, he spent 21 years at Intel Corporation, holding roles such as Intel Fellow and Chief Systems Architect for Mobile Systems Technologies.

Throughout his career, Dr. Thakkar has consistently fostered innovation by establishing startups within large corp rations and smaller organizations, leading to the formation of stellar research and engineering teams.

Dr. Thakkar holds both a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester. An accomplished inventor and scholar, he holds 87 patents and has published 45 papers, with over 5,000 citations on Google Scholar.