Professors

Faizal HAFIZ

Postdoctoral researcher

Machine Learning, Multi-criteria Optimization, Data-driven Modeling, Business Analytics

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Faizal HAFIZ

Academy

Digitalization

Research center

SKEMA Centre for Analytics and Management Science

Location

Sophia Antipolis

Discipline

Analytics Information & Operations

Faizal Hafiz is a researcher specializing in machine learning, multi-criteria optimization, and data-driven modeling. He is pursuing his Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) in Computer Science at Université Côte d'Azur and holds Maître de Conférences qualifications in both Computer Science (CNRS 27) and Electrical & Systems Engineering (CNRS 63) from the Conseil National des Universités, France (2024). Dr. Hafiz earned his PhD in Computational Intelligence from The University of Auckland (New Zealand International Doctoral Scholar, 2016–2019).

His academic career spans three continents, beginning as a Research Assistant Professor at King Saud University (2010–2016), followed by research positions at The University of Auckland (2016–2020), and currently as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the SKEMA AI Institute, Université Côte d'Azur (since 2021). At SKEMA, he teaches machine learning, data science, Python programming, and quantitative methods across multiple French campuses (Paris, Lille, and Sophia-Antipolis) with consistently high student satisfaction scores (89%–94%).

Dr. Hafiz has mentored over 24 undergraduate and 8 graduate students, while maintaining active collaborations with researchers in Brazil, New Zealand, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and India. His industry experience includes developing data mining algorithms for operations optimization at Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. (India) and creating AI-based diagnostic tools as a consultant for oDocs Eye Care (New Zealand).

Dr. Hafiz's research focuses on developing optimization and machine learning algorithms for complex data-driven problems, with applications spanning financial forecasting, supply chain management, healthcare, energy systems, and epidemic control. He has authored 50 publications (34 journal articles, 16 conference papers), with over 86% appearing in top-tier Q1 journals — including 13 articles in ABS-ranked journals (1 Rank 4, 12 Rank 3) since 2021 — in venues such as Omega, Decision Support Systems, Computers & Operations Research, Annals of Operations Research, Pattern Recognition, Neurocomputing and IEEE Transactions. Citation metrics: over 790 Google Scholar citations (h-index: 16); over 611 Scopus citations (h-index: 14).

Education
2019
PhD in Computational Intelligence, Auckland University, New Zealand
2008
M. Tech, Electrical Engineering, S.V. National Institute of Technology (NIT, Surat), India
2006
B.E., Electrical Engineering, South Gujarat University, India
Experience
Full-time academic positions
Since 2021
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, SKEMA Business School, France
2016 - 2020
PhD Student, Auckland University, New Zealand
2010 - 2016
Assistant Professor (Research), King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
Other professional experiences
2008 - 2010
Assistant Manager, Power Distribution Networks, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., India
Other research activities
PhD Supervision
Since 2022
G. DEWANTORO, Auckland University, PhD thesis, Thesis co-director
2022
M. MUBASHIR WANI, PhD thesis, Thesis co-director

Peer-reviewed journal articles

BROEKAERT, J., LA TORRE, D. and HAFIZ, F. (2025). The impact of the psychological effect of infectivity on Nash-balanced control strategies for epidemic networks. Annals of Operations Research, 351, pp. 1743–1765.
BROEKAERT, J., HAFIZ, F., LA TORRE, D. and JAYARAMAN, R. (2025). Managing resilience and viability of supranational supply chains under epidemic control scenarios. Omega, 133, pp. 103234.
BROEKAERT, J., LA TORRE, D., HAFIZ, F. and BRUSSET, X. (2025). The diverging control policy’s hand in supranational supply chain reconfiguration. International Journal of Production Economics, 284, pp. 109567.
HAFIZ, F., BROEKAERT, J. and SWAIN, A. (2025). Evolution of Neural Architectures for Financial Forecasting: A Note on Data Incompatibility during Crisis Periods. Annals of Operations Research, 346, pp. 1011-1025.
MUBASHIR WANI, M., HAFIZ, F., SWAIN, A. and BROEKAERT, J. (2025). Balancing energy consumption and thermal comfort in buildings: a multi-criteria framework. Annals of Operations Research, 346, pp. 1841–1867.
HAFIZ, F., NAIK, C., LA TORRE, D. and SWAIN, A. (2024). Quantification of Nonstationary Power Quality Events: A New Index Based on l_p Norm of Energy. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, 54(12), pp. 7457 - 7471.
HAFIZ, F., BROEKAERT, J., LA TORRE, D. and SWAIN, A. (2024). A multi-criteria approach to evolve sparse neural architectures for stock market forecasting. Annals of Operations Research, 167(106680), pp. 1-45.
BROEKAERT, J., LA TORRE, D., HAFIZ, F. and REPETTO, M. (2024). A comparative cost assessment of coalescing epidemic control strategies in heterogeneous social-contact networks. Computers & Operations Research, 167, pp. 106680.
BROEKAERT, J., LA TORRE, D. and HAFIZ, F. (2024). Competing control scenarios in probabilistic SIR epidemics on social-contact networks. Annals of Operations Research, 336, pp. 2037-2060.
HAFIZ, F., BROEKAERT, J., LA TORRE, D. and SWAIN, A. (2023). Co-evolution of Neural Architectures and Features for Stock Market Forecasting: A Multi-objective Decision Perspective. Decision Support Systems, 174, pp. 114015.