PROFESSOR
Prof. Zakaria Abou El Houda
zakaria.abouelhouda@inrs.ca
Zakaria Abou El Houda is an Assistant Professor at the Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications Center of the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS-EMT), Canada. He is the founding director of the Resilient Cybersecurity Laboratory (RSEC) and a member of the INRS-UQO Joint Research Unit in Cybersecurity and Digital Trust.
Dr. Abou El Houda has contributed to significant research projects that apply machine learning techniques to intrusion detection systems (IDS), with a focus on enhancing their explainability and robustness. His research addresses critical challenges in the security of next-generation networks, including 5G and beyond, by developing resilient mechanisms to mitigate emerging threats.
Dr. Abou El Houda’s work has been published in leading scientific journals, and he is an active participant in international conferences and collaborative research initiatives that shape the future of secure, intelligent, and adaptive network systems. He was listed by Stanford University among the top 2% of the world’s most influential researchers in both 2024 and 2025.
Research Interests:
- Network Security
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Secure and Resilient Next Generation Networks (B6G)
- Applied Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity
- Secure and Explainable Artificial Intelligence
- Network Orchestration and Automation (SDN/NFV)
- Secure and Frugal Edge Intelligence
- Blockchain and its applications
- Quantum Computing
NSERC Subject Codes
- 2508 Communications Networks
- 2700 Information Technology
- 2525 Wireless communication systems
- 2604 Intelligent systems applications
- 2800 Artificial Intelligence
PhD Students
Ines Guerziz
PhD Student
Research interests: Wireless Communication, Generative AI, Cybersecurity.
Abderrahman Elhajjout
PhD Student
Research interests: Machine Learning, Generative AI, Large Language Models.
Kaouthar Merzouki
PhD Student
Research interests: Graph Neural Networks, Cybersecurity, IoT, APT Attacks, Artificial Intelligence.
Samuel Olekšák
PhD Student
Research interests: Blockchain, Zero-knowledge Proofs, Decentralized Applications.
Ali Mehrban
PhD student ( Incoming)
Research interests: Machine Learning, O-RAN, 6G Networks
Interns
Maroua Cherifi
Intern
Research interests: Machine learning, Federated Learning, Healthcare.
Alumnis
- PhD
- H. Amari, Smart models for security enhancement in the internet of vehicles (co-supervised with Prof. Khoukhi), 2023.
- Master
- M. Bernoussi, Blockchain integration with the Internet of things, 2023.
- A. Idelhaj, Leveraging Large Language Models to enhance Network Attack Detection in IoT environments, 2024.
- M. A. Fall, Reinforcement Learning for intrusion detection system, 2025.
- H. Youssef, Efficient Federated Learning Under Heterogeneous Distributions, 2025.
- H. Bouslama, LLM Architecture for Smart Contract Vulnerability Detection, 2025.
- Research Associates
- A. Selamnia, Securing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks using Quantum Machine Learning, 2025.
- A. Kadi, Quantum Machine Learning for mitigating Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, 2025.