Abdullah Al-Alaj
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Office Location: 132 Clarke Hall
Phone: 757-233-8742
Email: aalalaj@vwu.edu
Department/s:
-
Abdullah Al-Alaj earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He has been a member of the èßäÊÓƵ University faculty since 2000 and serves in the Department of Computer Science in Virginia Beach, VA. He led the development and implementation of the cybersecurity major and minor at èßäÊÓƵ University, helping expand the university's academic offerings in this critical field. He also manages the Cyber Lab at VWU, supporting cybersecurity education and research.
Before joining èßäÊÓƵ University, Dr. Al-Alaj taught at several universities including Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), Al-Balqa Applied University, Yarmouk University, and Texas A&M University–San Antonio.
His research interests include cybersecurity, access control models, Software-Defined Networking, and applied machine learning. He serves as a reviewer and technical committee member for several journals and international conferences in computer science and cybersecurity. Dr. Al-Alaj is also a Co-Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation S-STEM grant of approximately $2 million supporting STEM student success at èßäÊÓƵ University.
Khamaiseh, S., Jost, D., AlSobeh, A., Al-Alaj, A., & Jiang, H., "ADT++: Advanced Adversarial Distributional Training with Class-Wise Robustness." In 2025 IEEE 12th International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA), pp. 1-10, IEEE, 2025.
Khamaiseh, S., Jost, D., Al-Alaj, A., & Aleroud, A., "Powerful & Generalizable, Why not both? VA: Various Attacks Framework for Robust Adversarial Training." In International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART), vol. 2, pp. 228-239, Science and Technology Publications, Lda, 2025.
Khamaiseh, S., Mancino, M., Jost, D., Al-Alaj, A., Bagagem, D., & Serra, E., "Fool'Em All-Fool-X: A Powerful & Fast Method for Generating Effective Adversarial Images." In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), pp. 7041-7075, IEEE, 2024.
Wardat, M., & Al-Alaj, A., "DeepCNN: A Dual Approach to Fault Localization and Repair in Convolutional Neural Networks." IEEE Access, 2024.
Khamaiseh, S., Bagagem, D., Al-Alaj, A., Mancino, M., Alomari, H., & Aleroud, A., "Target-X: An Efficient Algorithm for Generating Targeted Adversarial Images to Fool Neural Networks." In 2023 IEEE 47th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), pp. 617-626, IEEE, 2023.
Aleroud, A., Shariah, M., Malkawi, R., Khamaiseh, S., & Al-Alaj, A., "A Privacy-Enhanced Human Activity Recognition Using GAN & Entropy Ranking of Microaggregated Data." Cluster Computing, pp. 1-16, 2023.
Alomari, H. W., Al-Badarneh, A. F., Al-Alaj, A., & Khamaiseh, S., "Enhanced Approach for Agglomerative Clustering Using Topological Relations." IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 21945-21967, 2023.
Khamaiseh, S., Bagagem, D., Al-Alaj, A., Mancino, M., & Alomari, H. W., "Adversarial Deep Learning: A Survey on Adversarial Attacks and Defense Mechanisms on Image Classification." IEEE Access, 2022.
Khamaiseh, S., Al-Alaj, A., Adnan, M., & Alomari, H. W., "The Robustness of Detecting Known and Unknown DDoS Saturation Attacks in SDN via the Integration of Supervised and Semi-Supervised Classifiers." Future Internet, vol. 14, no. 6, 164, 2022.
Al-Alaj, A., Krishnan, R., & Sandhu, R., "ParaSDN: An Access Control Model for SDN Applications Based on Parameterized Roles and Permissions." In 2020 IEEE 6th International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC), pp. 107-116, IEEE, 2020.
Khamaiseh, S., Al-Alaj, A., & Warner, A., "FloodDetector: Detecting Unknown DoS Flooding Attacks in SDN." In 2020 International Conference on Internet of Things and Intelligent Applications (ITIA), pp. 1-5, IEEE, 2020.
Khamaiseh, S., Alsmadi, I., & Al-Alaj, A., "Deceiving Machine Learning-Based Saturation Attack Detection Systems in SDN." In 2020 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), pp. 44-50, IEEE, 2020.
Al-Alaj, A., Sandhu, R., & Krishnan, R., "A Model for the Administration of Access Control in Software Defined Networking Using Custom Permissions." In 2020 Second IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems and Applications (TPS-ISA), pp. 169-178, IEEE, 2020.
Al-Alaj, A., "Role-Based Access Control for Software Defined Networking: Formal Models and Implementation." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2020.
Al-Alaj, A., Krishnan, R., & Sandhu, R., "SDN-RBAC: An Access Control Model for SDN Controller Applications." In 2019 4th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Security (ICCCS), pp. 1-8, 2019.
Al-Alaj, A., Sandhu, R., & Krishnan, R., "A Formal Access Control Model for SE-Floodlight Controller." In Proceedings of the ACM International Workshop on Security in Software Defined Networks & Network Function Virtualization (co-located with CODASPY 2019), pp. 1-6, 2019.
Al-Badarneh, A. F., Al-Alaj, A. S., & Mahafzah, B. A., "Multi Small Index (MSI): A Spatial Indexing Structure." Journal of Information Science, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 643-660, 2013.
Al-Badarneh, A., & Al-Alaj, A., "A Spatial Index Structure Using Dynamic Recursive Space Partitioning." In 2011 International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology (IIT), 2011.