MEET OUR STAFF MEMBERS
Meet our faculty for 2022-2023
“Students are eager to learn and have a wider outlook and better perspective opinions that can be applied to our current industry trends.”
Mr. Isomiddin Abdunabiev has recently got his Master's degree at the Computer Software Department of Hanyang University.
Mr. Abdunabiev led research on optimisation architecture for cloud scalability using Artificial intelligence (AI). He implemented an AI that uses a time series prediction model to predict the upcoming load using previously measured data and leads the server to scale on demand.
Currently, Mr. Abdunabiev is looking for a window for improvement in the cryptography of edge computing to improve security.
“Cryptography in the cloud employs encryption techniques to secure data that will be used or stored in the cloud. It allows users to conveniently and securely access shared cloud services, as any data hosted by cloud providers is protected with encryption. The same goes for Edge Computing, an emerging computing paradigm that refers to a range of networks and devices at or near the user. Edge is about processing data closer to where it is being generated, enabling processing at greater speeds and volumes, leading to greater action-led results in real-time”.
“WIUT has offered me more opportunities to prosper in terms of both professional and personal growth. In addition, WIUT is the first international University in Uzbekistan, hence they have the biggest experience in teaching and academic excellence, which offers students and teachers better chances to grow and thrive.”
“As a researcher as well as a teacher I believe that every class I teach and every verbal or digital interaction I have with my students enriches my own mathematical scholarship.”
Dr. Dilmurod Bekbayev has a PhD in Mathematics (Computational and Theoretical Science) from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and he also has Bachelor and Master degrees on Mathematics (algebra, mathematical logic and number theory) from the National University of Uzbekistan.
Dr. Bekbayev has eight years of teaching experience. He worked as a Lecturer in Mathematics at the Turin Polytechnic Lyceum in Tashkent. During his PhD at IIUM, he taught such modules as "Linear Algebra", "Differential Equations" and "Discrete Mathematics" as a part time lecturer and tutor. He also has extensive experience as a Senior Lecturer at the Management Development Institute of Singapore in Tashkent where he taught finite mathematics and calculus, introduction to statistics and advanced quantitative methods.
“The teachers whom I remember the most have had some attributes in common: they presented their subjects in a way that caught my interest, clarified difficult topics and led me through complex areas. These role models have influenced my approach to teaching. Mathematics is more important today. It powers scientific advancements with quantitative results and affects our lives in all perspectives. Most of the students begin foundation year with the idea that mathematics is a hard subject and that it mainly deals with numbers and equations. One of my teaching goals is to show my students that mathematics is not simply restricted to the study of numbers and equations. Rather, mathematics is a language through which one can precisely describe real life phenomena.”
“I would like to encourage creative and innovative thinking, positive curiously and the tendency to become problem solvers to meet the challenges of the dynamic workplace.”
Dr. Athar Hameed has acquired a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from University of Lincoln, UK, and a PhD from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He is certified in ability and personality assessments from the British Psychological Society and Cambridge University.
As an academic, Dr. Athar’s research is focused on organizational psychology, employee well-being and organizational change. His research focuses on the application of the principles of Positive Psychology (PP. 2.0) at the workplace to lower occupational stress and toxic work emotions, help improve employees' work satisfaction and overall well-being.
“Organizational sustainability is often (rightly) considered as reducing the firm’s carbon footprint, decreasing toxic emissions and utilizing recyclable materials. To build sustainable organizations, employee well-being must also become a key focus of organizational theory, design, and employment practices. People spend more than half of their life at work. In addition to profits and shareholder value, employee well-being must be a raison d'être of socially responsible and sustainable organizations.”
As a consultant, Dr. Athar has worked for multiple organizations in the corporate and development sector. He has worked with the telecom industry, hospitality, airline industry, FMCG sector (fast moving consumer goods), pharmaceutical firms, technology sector, development sector organizations (working in the areas of education, provision of clean drinking water and health care in rural support programs etc.). His consulting assignments have been in the areas of change management, organizational culture and value systems, employees’ psychometric assessments, and other relevant fields.
As a Lead Trainer, Dr. Athar has trained a little over 10,000 employees. He has designed and delivered learning interventions on occupational stress, employee well-being, supercharged teamwork, leadership, innovative and creative thinking skills and personality assessment and awareness to name a few.
“The primary goal of a teacher involves inspiration, creation of friendly environment, individual approach to needs, assistance in developing soft skills in communication and teamwork.”
Dr. Aleksei Gudkov is a Researcher and Counsel with a wide range of experience in the following fields: Tech Law, Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Blockchain, Personal data, M&A, Corporate Governance, and Theory of Law.
He earned his PhD in Law at Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.
The professional background of Dr. Gudkov contains different educational institutions throughout Russia, where he also stood out for his wealth of knowledge and extensive experience in his field. Moreover, Dr. Gudkov has been featured in such journals as Journal of British Blockchain Association and Journal of Digital Technologies and Law.
He has recently joined Westminster International University in Tashkent with the aim of contributing to the well-being of the University and increasing the knowledge and quality of students' knowledge.
"The primary goal of a teacher is to direct, encourage, train to achieve the higher result and help to overcome problems."
"The student class could be very diversified in terms of culture, ethics, life style and income. It is important to elaborate equal treatment to everyone on fair base of success in learning materials and implementation of knowledge."
Currently, Dr. Aleksei Gudkov has a research focus in risk governance, artificial intelligence governance, and blockchain regulation.
“Teaching was initially my hobby, later it became my career and today it is a part of my life.”
Dr. Ajay Kumar Jain has worked at the University of Technology and Science, Muscat, Oman for the last seven years. He has also worked for 15 years in six different higher educational institutions across India. He has a PhD in Finance from D.A.V.V University Indore (M.P.), India. He also has an M.B.A (Finance), an M.Phil (Business) and an M.Com (Finance, Accounting & Taxation) degree from India. He is also a certified Accounting Technician from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and has been appointed as a financial education resource trainer by SEBI, a capital market regulator & controller institution.
With three years of corporate experience and 20 years of academic work experience across two countries, he has authored five research papers in the finance field and is currently working on a paper on crypto currency. Dr. Ajay is a merit holder in Master’s of Commerce and has supervised successfully many projects, and events including India’s First Real Time Capital Market Operations Event.
Recently, he has joined the Westminster International University of Tashkent as Senior Lecturer in Finance to contribute towards achieving organizational goals by imparting quality education and exceling the knowledge of students.
“I am passionate about teaching and particularly about building research attitudes amongst students.”
Dr. Julio Cesar Zuluaga Jimenez has a Bachelor (BSc) in History, a Master’s degree (MSc) in Organisational Theory and a PhD in Management.
During the past six years, Dr. Zuluaga held the position of Lecturer and Assistant Professor at the Management of Organisations Department of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia), where his main research interest focused on the relationship between knowledge diffusion, innovation and technological change. He has also worked on the business history of family firms, specifically on the topic of corporate social responsibility, family succession and firm strategy.
During the past two years, conscious of the need for his research activity to impact society, Dr. Zuluaga has focused a large part of his research on local conditions and on establishing collaborations with societal partners. To this effect he applied for and won a research grant to analyse and support -through consulting- business cooperatives of ex-combatants in the context of the peacebuilding efforts in Colombia. He collaborated with civil organisations and public institutions to strengthen the management skills of several business cooperatives.
During the pandemic, Dr. Zuluaga managed to successfully combine theory with practice based on new IT tools such as case studies and business simulators.
Currently, Dr. Zuluaga is interested in learning about Central Asia’s business environment and firm strategies to develop a comparative perspective with those of Latin America; he hopes to benefit from his teaching and research activities at the Westminster International University in Tashkent by working with students writing case studies about Uzbek firms.
“I believe that for students to build up necessary interest and knowledge during their studying, all learning materials and practical tasks should be delivered most effectively and interestingly.”
Ms.Viktoriya Kan is a graduate of Westminster International University in Tashkent where she got a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with Finance and a Master’s degree in Applied Economics.
“Poverty is one of the most severe world-wide problems. I am confident that child well-being and women empowerment are the key factors which can help fight poverty. A significant amount of research has proved that both reduce poverty and encourage economic growth”.
“My main interest is to investigate what factors positively affect child well-being and women empowerment, as well as what help can be offered so that it will advantage these populations. In future, I would like to address the same two phenomena, but from different perspectives.”
“As my goal is to pursue an academic path towards a PhD, I would like to have teaching experience in my alma mater. As a student, I experienced the outstanding work WIUT delivers to its students as one of the top universities in Uzbekistan and in Central Asia. I would like to have this chance and become as knowledgeable and qualified as my senior colleagues at WIUT.”
“My duty in the digital space is to implement my knowledge during each lesson. By using practical experience, I can build the digital life of our country together with my students.”
Mr. Karimov has recently finished his Master's degree in Business Intelligence and Analytics with a distinction from Westminster International University in Tashkent. He took part in several international projects - introducing key performance indicators for tax officers, applets for fiscal cash register machines, building an Automated System of Control of VAT (value-added tax) based on data lake technology - partnering with organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Tax Service (Russian Federation), widely known companies such as Feitian (China, US) and InfineonTech (Germany). Moreover, he has experience in using data science techniques and machine learning algorithms for solving classification problems in taxation.
Mr. Karimov has more than 10 research publications appearing in conferences, international and local journals, and collections of scientific papers. Most of his work is dedicated to the application of data science techniques and machine learning algorithms in businesses, and digital transformation of taxation. During his work at the Scientific Information Center of New Technologies under the State Tax Committee, Mr. Karimov had hands-on experience creating taxpayer big data which required a lot of ETL data manipulations.
“During my BSc and MSc programmes at WIUT, I acquired tremendous knowledge and opportunities for professional and personal growth. I can surely say that WIUT has given me tremendous aspiration. Today I am the "brainchild" and "product" of the first international University in Uzbekistan. Having a detailed research plan, I chose my home university for further career growth”.
“I have a strong passion in my subject of Accounting, Finance and Banking and like to keep up to date in my subject to allow my students to get the full potential of my experiences.”
Dr. Niazi has a PhD in Finance from the University Utara Malaysia (UUM). UUM is one of QS top-ranked universities in Malaysia, accredited by world reputed bodies such as Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and Association of MBAs (AMBA). He has a Master in Business Administration (MBA) with a specialization in Finance & Accounting from the Institute of Management Studies, University of Peshawar, Pakistan. He has also achieved a MS with a specialisation in Human Resource Management from Gandahara University, Peshawar.
Dr. Niazi has over 18 years of teaching and academic leadership experience in internationally accredited universities. During this period, he has advanced his learning and teaching skills and has found the most successful means of educating his students through participatory sessions. He is a team player and enjoys working in challenging and demanding environments. As a Leader/Mentor and Senior Lecturer, he has delivered lectures and conducted a variety of projects with focusing on students’ participation and learning.
He is recognised by “AD Scientific Index 2022”, and has been included in the list of “World Scientist and University Rankings 2022”. He has a solid research background with more than 12 research papers on his credit. These papers have been published in reputable peer-reviewed and SCOPUS indexed, Web of Science (WOS), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and impact factors journals, and a couple of his papers are currently under review. His areas of interest in research are in corporate governance, corporate finance and political economy.
“I enjoy transmitting my knowledge to younger generations and see them grow.”
His research background is about image processing and bioinformatics. Recently, he has started new research on practical data analytics tools which is available online for public use.
During the past 25 years in the academic cycle, Dr. Hamid Reza Shahbazkia has been involved in many international projects. Some of these projects were purely research based and some were linked to educational exchanges and mutual recognition of degrees.
“I enjoy transmitting my knowledge to younger generations and seeing them grow. In this path I have taught most of the basic computer science courses and have supervised more than 30 masters and PhDs.”
“My teaching style is based on the development of students’ autonomy and curiosity by introducing real life problems as soon as possible in the course curriculum.”
“My actual research objective is to create an online platform for day-to-day management of contact centers by incorporating different AI and ML methods into the global human resource optimization task.”
“Science is an extremely exciting process for me, which can be even more rewarding, when I succeed to engage young and talented minds into it.”
Dr. Yakubenko has got both his PhD and MA degree in Development Economics from Georg-August University of Goettingen, Germany, where he also worked as a postdoc and an academic coordinator of the Economics Department.
After completing his PhD, he worked as an Associate Professor at Higher School of Economy, one of the leading universities of Russia. Besides his academic activity, he has also been involved, as a short-term consultant (STC), in a World Bank’s project, within which he wants to improve the understanding of the geography of poverty across the world.
Dr. Yakubenko’s research topics primarily fall into the broad areas of development and health economics. For the former, he studies international migration and its consequences for populations left behind. Within health economics, he focuses on mental health issues and tries to establish fundamental factors that can cause depression or affect suicide rates. Besides mental health, he is also interested in behavioural aspects associated with the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Yakubenko has also provided his services as a referee to PLOS One and Economics and Human Biology.
“WIUT offers a very comfortable and stimulating research environment in a very vibrant and fast developing city. I enjoy working with motivated students and am always happy to share my international experience with them. From my first experience at WIUT, everyone here is eager to develop and acquire new knowledge. I am excited.”
“I feel compelled to share my experience with my students so that I can create more experts in economics.”
Ms. Nodirakhon Kamilova earned her undergraduate degree in Entrepreneurship and Management with First Class Honors degree from the Management Institute of Singapore in Tashkent in 2014. She joined WIUT in 2016 and has been affiliated with the University since then. Along with her professional duties, Ms. Kamilova managed to achieve a Master’s degree in Applied Economics at WIUT in 2019.
She has 2 years of teaching experience in Micro- and Macroeconomics serving the Undergraduate School and Mathematics to Pre-University School. Furthermore, Ms. Kamilova also assists in teaching the Economic Growth and Development module to Masters students at WIUT.
Her research interests are mainly in Development and Health Economics. Currently, she is working on research projects related to Higher Education and Nutrition-remittance Nexus.
“Working at WIUT gives me a strong level of confidence and self-satisfaction by involving lifelong learning. Considering the huge amount of knowledge and expertise learned here at WIUT, I can state confidently that this is my biggest academic achievement”.
“WIUT has already become my second home with its friendly organisational environment, caring management and various opportunities it provides for its staff. It helped me to evaluate my abilities and to grow the best skills of mine as a professional. As a university lecturer, I am planning to get a PhD degree in my field, and academic experience gained at WIUT which will be invaluable for me to reach this goal”.
