Dr Rahat Iqbal is a senior academic with 20 years’ experience in industrial and academic roles. His main research interests lie in Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Information Retrieval, Artificial Intelligence and Energy Efficient Communication Protocols. He is leading  the Research Group in Big Data and IoT in the Institute for Future Transport and Cities.

Dr Iqbal has supervised to completion 17 PhD students.  He serves on programme committee and advisory committee of many international conferences and journals. He has published more 130 papers in international journals, conferences, book chapters and workshops.  He has also co-invented 5 patents relating to biologically inspired deep machine learning approaches for fault detection & isolation, route optimisation and monitoring driving.

Dr Iqbal is a principle investigator on a 3.5-year PhD project (£104,892) titled "Urban flood monitoring and forecasting" funded by EIT Digital and UK Industrial partner (2021-2025).

Dr Iqbal is a principle investigator on a 3.5-year PhD project (£104,892) titled "Passenger profiling for autonomous car using AI / machine learning" funded by EIT Digital and UK Industrial partner (2021-2025).

Dr Iqbal is a principle investigator on a 2-year project (£105,310) titled “Digital Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Proving Ground (DIGICAV)”funded by Innovate UK in partnership with HORIBA MIRA (2019-2020).DIGICAV

Dr Iqbal is a principle investigator on a two-year project (£750,000) titled “Flood Ultra-Cognitive Dendrite (FLUD)” funded by Innovate UK and PlaTcom Venturs, Malaysia under the Technology Programme “Newton fund: UK-Malaysia urban Innovation Challenge 2017 Competition for funding.

Dr Iqbal is a principle investigator for knowledge transfer partnership and spin-out company, a supplier of high-tech intelligent data-driven solutions. He is seconded to work as CEO at Interactive Coventry Limited.

Dr Iqbal was principle investigator on a one year project (2012-2013) “Driver’s intent prediction: self-learning car initiative” funded (£49,301) by Technology Strategy Board funded in collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover Ltd.

From 2013 – 2015, Dr Iqbal worked on a number of Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise Network (KEEN) projects in collaboration with Infinity Wireless Ltd, Modus IT Ltd to develop high-tech solutions relating to data recovery apps and big data analytics for businesses. He was principle investigator on a two year project (2011-2013) “Development of an innovation teaching tool using web/mobile and service oriented technologies” funded by Technology Strategy Board Project in collaboration with Currant limited.

From 2009 - 2013, he was principle investigator for an EPSRC funded (£85,052) project titled “Task Sensitive Search Recommender System Based on Relevance Feedback”. The project was carried out in collaboration with Trinity Expert Systems.

From 2007 – 2009, Dr Iqbal was involved in a number of projects to introduce novel teaching, learning and assessment methods. These projects were funded by Coventry University, CILASS: Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sheffield. Also over this period, he was involved in a number of industrial consultation activities.

Dr Iqbal was also involved in the project management and development of the EU FP7 project CHIL (Computers in Human Interaction Loop) at the Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Information Retrieval, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence and Energy Efficient Communication Protocols.

Dr Rahat Iqbal is leading a Research Group in Big Data and IoT in the Institute of Future Transport and Cities with a strong ambition to achieve major innovations in big data analytics research and deliver high impact industrial and commercial applications addressing challenges in smart cities and industry 4.0.