Prof Nikolay Mehandjiev has built his academic career in the UK, starting his PhD in 1991, moving to his first Lecturer role in 1995 and joining Dept of Computation at UMIST in 1998. In 2007 he joined Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester, one of the top UK business schools. He moved to Dubai in 2024 to commence his current role of Vice Provost Research for the University of Birmingham Dubai.
Prof Mehandjiev’s research interests focus on the interface between AI, IS, People and Organisations. He firmly believes that the best value of IT and AI can only be obtained by aligning strategy, people and technology. His foray into the world of AI was in 1990, when for his master’s dissertation he researched frame-based knowledge representations for traffic management. Since 1998 he has been working in multi-agent systems applications, often in collaboration with BT, SAP and Airbus amongst others. He has used machine learning since 2020, having developed a system for predicting fraudulent returns in online shopping.
During his career, Mehandjiev has been involved in collaborative projects with industry worth over €80m, managing over €10m of funding. His research is grounded in real industrial needs and has led to several patents and over 150 peer-reviewed publications, including over 30 journal papers. He has been guest editor to 3 special issues of international journals, and has worked as an expert reviewer for the European Commission and for fundings bodies in Poland, Belgium and Kazakhstan.