Dr. Adeel Zafar

Postdoctoral Researcher in Machine Learning
Halmstad University, Sweden

About

I am a postdoctoral researcher working on machine learning systems for industrial data analysis. My research interests focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs), and AI Security. My work explores building reliable and secure AI systems including named entity recognition, policy enforcement systems, adversarial evaluation of language models, and applied machine learning solutions for industrial and enterprise environments.

I am particularly interested in bridging academic research with real-world deployments of AI systems in industry.

Research Areas

Selected Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher in Machine Learning
Halmstad University, Sweden — Feb 2025 – Present

Working on machine learning models that extract insights from large-scale industrial datasets. My research focuses on predictive maintenance and asset optimization for complex equipment such as trucks and pumps through industry–academia collaboration.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer
Paradigm Networks, USA — Dec 2023 – Jan 2025

Designed and deployed a Named Entity Recognition system integrated with Large Language Models for policy compliance across domains including finance, healthcare, and personal data. Led red-teaming and security evaluation of LLM systems, identifying vulnerabilities such as prompt injection and adversarial manipulation in policy engines and RAG pipelines.

Associate Professor & Head of Department
Riphah International University, Pakistan — Sep 2019 – Jan 2025

Taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Computer Science and Data Science. Conducted research in machine learning, healthcare AI, and procedural content generation.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer
Scenarios Limited — Feb 2023 – Jan 2024

Developed recommendation systems and conversational AI solutions including LLM-based financial chatbots and generative AI applications.

Research Fellow
New York University – Tandon School of Engineering — 2018

Conducted research in procedural content generation and authored publications in game AI and search-based level generation.

Selected Publications

Zafar A., Mujtaba H., Beg O. Search-based procedural content generation for GVG-LG Applied Soft Computing, 2020
Rahman A.U., Zafar A. Enhancing heart disease prediction using self-attention transformer models Nature Scientific Reports, 2024
Kishwar A., Zafar A. Fake News Detection on Pakistani News using Machine Learning Expert Systems with Applications, 2022
Shehzad I., Zafar A. Breast Cancer CT-Scan Image Classification Using Transfer Learning SN Computer Science, 2023
Zafar A., Mujtaba H., Beg O. Using patterns as objectives for general video game level generation ICGA Journal, 2019

Full Publication List

For the full list of journal and conference publications please see my Google Scholar profile.