Prof. Dr. Mohamed Fawzi Elgendi

I grew up surrounded by hardware, taking apart old radios and televisions to find out how they worked. Looking past the surface of things was my first school, and even the occasional electric shock only made me more curious about what was underneath.

My father's hardware store was the school that taught me the most. Between the shelves, the customers and the problems that had to be solved before closing time, I learned that a theory is worth nothing until it turns into something that works in somebody's hands.

My early years in network engineering and cybersecurity settled one conviction in me: when the pressure rises and a crisis starts to spread, go back to first principles and rebuild on ground that can carry more weight.

When AI began reaching into the way we think, the job changed under me. I understood that protecting data was no longer the whole of it, and that what really needed protecting was a person's will and their freedom to choose.

Engineering, cybersecurity and the ethics of AI finally came together into one piece of work. It took its shape in my doctoral research, and in the Unified Cognitive Security Maturity Model that came out of it.

I do not judge what I build by how visible it is. I judge it by whether it keeps working quietly, protecting a person's freedom to think, their right to decide for themselves, and their confidence in walking into whatever comes next.