Prof Chang won the award
Prof Chang gave a keynote
BIRMINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM, May 4, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Professor Victor Chang, Professor of Business Analytics at Aston Business School, Aston University, has been named Cybersecurity Professional of the Year 2026 by Cyber Security Awards, a global competition recognising outstanding contribution to the field. The award adds to a run of sector-specific recognitions that, taken together, reflect work operating well beyond the edges of academic research.
The recognition comes at a moment when Chang’s cybersecurity programme is expanding on multiple fronts. His self-developed FedAvgVChang architecture — a federated learning system for intrusion detection developed and validated extensively by himself for years, and also in collaboration with the University of Tokyo through the UK Government’s International Science Partnerships Fund — addresses a constraint that has long limited collaborative cyber defence: how organisations share threat intelligence when regulations rightly prevent them from sharing the raw data behind it. The approach trains detection models locally across distributed devices, so security knowledge spreads across institutional networks without sensitive records ever leaving their source. Results presented at the IEEE CyberSciTech/DASC/PICom/CBDCom 2025 conference in Hakodate, Japan, showed 97 percent detection accuracy on industrial benchmarks, with full threat-analysis cycles completing in under a second on low-cost edge hardware.
That architecture is part of a broader programme that has been adopted for more than a decade. Chang’s earlier Deep-IFS intrusion detection system remains active across data centres in England, Taiwan, and Singapore; his Cloud Computing Adoption Framework (CCAF) contributed to the evidence base for national guidance on sovereign AI security; and active Innovate UK-funded projects are extending these foundations into NHS clinical infrastructure, financial institutions, and public-sector AI governance. The work across these deployments has been consistently practical: real systems, under real adversarial pressure, producing results that practitioners can act on.
“Privacy and security are not constraints on what AI can do. They are the engineering conditions that allow AI to operate where it is most needed — in hospitals, on factory floors, inside financial systems, across public networks.” — Professor Victor Chang.
The Cyber Security Awards recognition joins a wider sequence of independent assessments of Chang’s work in 2025 and 2026. Computing magazine included him in its inaugural AI Leadership Index 2026, where he is the only academic among 25 senior practitioners. Enterprise World named him The Most Transformational Professor Advancing AI and Data Science Education 2026. CIO Look featured him as Pioneering AI Leader for Public Good 2026. Before those, the British Data Awards named him Data Leader of the Year 2025, and the IT Awards of Business Awards UK recognised the Cybersecurity Initiative of the Year in the same year. The 2024 BCS UK IT Industry Awards named him Inspirational Individual of the Year.
Chang holds fellowships from, among others, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), the British Computer Society (FBCS), the Institute of Physics (FInstP), Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH), Operation Research Society (ORS) and the honorary Fellowship from the Institute of Analytics (IoA). His publication record across more than 300 peer-reviewed papers has accumulated over 31,000 citations, placing him among the top 0.2 percent of scientists globally by citation impact. He has secured more than £3 million in research funding as Principal Investigator, with involvement in collaborative projects totalling £15 million across Europe and Asia.
Active funded projects in 2026 include the UK–Japan AI-Driven Malware Detection programme, the Sovereign AI Security initiative with NHS and SME partners, and a Quantum-Enhanced Transport Security project — each extending the same foundational commitment: security architecture designed from the outset to function inside the regulatory and operational realities of the institutions it protects.
About Professor Victor Chang
Professor Victor Chang holds the Chair of Business Analytics at Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. With over 26 years of experience across higher education and industry, his research covers privacy-preserving AI, federated learning, healthcare analytics, cybersecurity, financial AI, smart manufacturing, and intelligent transport. He holds fellowships from, among others, the British Computer Society, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society for Public Health, the Operations Research Society, and the Institute of Leadership.
Aston University research profile: research.aston.ac.uk/en/persons/prof-victor-chang/
Computing AI Leadership Index 2026: computing.co.uk/profile/ai-leaders-2026/professor-victor-chang
Cyber Security Awards: cybersecurityawards.com
Yulin Yao
Top Applied AI & Data Scientist, Aston University
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