Yahya Shahsavari, Ph.D.

Dr. Yahya Shahsavari is a Montreal-based researcher and technology specialist with a PhD in Computer Science from ÉTS Montreal and over 15 years of combined industry and academic experience. His expertise spans cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and communications engineering — fields he has consistently worked across both in rigorous research settings and complex real-world deployments. He has designed and operated enterprise-grade security infrastructures including firewalls, IDS/IPS, and VPN systems, conducted structured cryptographic research, and provided expert technical consulting to law firms and legal teams on complex technology-related matters. Alongside his security work, Dr. Shahsavari has built deep expertise in federated learning and privacy-preserving AI, with postdoctoral research at both the University of Montreal and ÉTS Montreal covering biometric-based authentication, privacy-preserving distributed systems, credit risk assessment, and AI-driven threat detection. He has published extensively on integrating machine learning with blockchain for secure healthcare analytics, and his blockchain research — conducted at ÉTS Montreal's FUSÉE Lab and the University of Montreal's Montreal Blockchain Lab — spans consensus mechanism analysis, Bitcoin network modeling, quantum blockchain systems, and CBDC evaluation at the Bank of Canada, work recognized with an IEEE Best Paper Award at DAPPS 2019. Underpinning all of this is a decade of hands-on communications and network engineering experience, from maintaining transmission networks for a national fixed-line operator serving over 10 million subscribers, to designing and operating mission-critical distributed infrastructure across multiple sites. A recipient of $196,000 in competitive funding from NSERC and Mitacs, Dr. Shahsavari is also an active reviewer for leading IEEE journals and conferences.