Wasswa Shafik (born on 23 May 1992), member, IEEE.^[1] is a computer scientist, author, researcher, information technologist, and educator. His strategic and transformative leadership has indelibly shaped the paradigms of technology, sustainable computing, and digital health governance.

He was born at St. Francis Hospital - Nsambya in Makindye, Makindye Division West, in Kampala District, in 1992.

Wasswa holds a bachelor's degree in Information Technology from Ndejje University, a master's of Engineering in Information Technology engineering (Computer and Communication Network option) from Yazd University, in the Islamic Republic of Iran and a PhD in Digital Science (Computer Science) from Universiti Brunei Darussalam.^[2] His PhD research was on the application of artificial intelligence and computer vision for plant stress detection, identification and classification. He has earned several non-degree certificates other agricultural, health, and interdisciplinary research certificates, including a Certificate of Human Subject (Protecting Human Research Participants), at the National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, US Department of Health, California, USA, Global Health Certificate (Monitoring & Evaluation Fundamentals), Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA, the Global Health Certificate (Sustainable Development Goals) at Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. Global Health Certificate (Interventions Commonly Accepted as Best Practices), Bloomberg School Of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21205, Baltimore MD 21205, 615 N Wolfe St, Baltimore USA. Global Health Center Certificate (Data Quality) at Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.

He is the founder and Team Lead at Dig Connectivity Research Laboratory (DCRLab) registered by Uganda Registration Services Bureau^[3] since 26 July 2019. An independent research laboratory striving to engage in cutting-edge research to design and develop end-to-end secure and reliable sustainable solutions and systems in areas of ecology, health and technology.^[2]

In 2013 to 2014 severed as Community Research Assistant  at Plan International, Luweero, Uganda. 2022-2023, as System Administrators (remote) at Pacelabs, Roseville, Minneapolis. 2017-2022 as Ag. Managing Director Asmaah Charity Organisation, Humanitarian Activities, Uganda, Technical Founder at Ummah Charity Group Uganda, Humanitarian Activities, Kampala, Uganda, 2017-2018, Assistant Data Officer at TechnoServe, Kampala, Uganda. 2017-2018, as Data Analyst at Population Services International (PSI-Uganda), Kampala, Uganda. 2016-2017 as Research Associate at Mercy Corps, Kampala, Uganda. 2016-2017 further severed as Community Data Officer at Programme for Accessible Health Communication (PACE -Uganda), Kampala, Uganda, 2016-2018 as Research Assistant at the Socio-Economic Data Centre (SEDC-Uganda), Prime Minister's Office, Kampala, Uganda, 2014-2017 as Dawa Information Technology Support at Thurayya Islam Media, Kampala, Uganda and 2014-2015 as Information technology Intern at Uganda Police Force (UPF, Naguru), Kampala, Uganda. His notable courses include Mathematics for Computer Engineering, Quantum Computing and Applications, Cyber-Physical System Security, Security Topics in Soft Computing, Internet Security, Selected Topics in Computing, Data Mining and Machine Learning.

He has published the finding of his research on Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Digital Health, Smart Agriculture, Sustainable Computing developing principled computationally and statistically efficient models and algorithms for various health and ecological bottlenecks.  He has published in technological and environmental journals and other peer publications hence cited with an H-Index of over 30 with 3,767 citations in over 6 sole-authored books, 3 co-edited books, 84 journal articles, 200+ book chapters, and 15 IEEE and non-IEEE conference papers.^[4]

• Shafik, W., Tufail, A., De Silva, L.C. et al. Deep learning technique for plant disease classification and pest detection and model explainability elevating agricultural sustainability. BMC Plant Biology, 25, 1491 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-025-07377-x. ●Shafik, W., Tufail, A., Namoun, A., De Silva, L. C., & Apong, R. A. A. H. M. (2023). A systematic literature review on plant disease detection: Motivations, classification techniques, datasets, challenges, and future trends. IEEE Access, 11, 59174-59203. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3284760. ●Shafik, W., Tufail, A., Liyanage, C. D. S., & Apong, R. A. A. H. M. (2023). Using a novel convolutional neural network for plant pests detection and disease classification. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5849-5861. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12700   ●Shafik, W., Tufail, A., De Silva Liyanage, C., & Apong, R. A. A. H. M. (2024). Using transfer learning-based plant disease classification and detection for sustainable agriculture. BMC Plant Biology, 24(1), 136. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-024-04825-y.    ●Shafik, W., Tufail, A., Liyanage De Silva, C., & Awg Haji Mohd Apong, R. A. (2025). A novel hybrid inception-xception convolutional neural network for efficient plant disease classification and detection. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 3936. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-82857-y.    ●Wang, Y., Shafik, W., Seong, J. T., Al Mutairi, A., Mustafa, M. S., & Mouhamed, M. R. (2023). Service delay and optimization of the energy efficiency of a system in fog-enabled smart cities. Alexandria Engineering Journal, 84, 112-125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2023.10.034. ●Saleh, R. A., Ghaleb, M., Shafik, W., & ERTUNÇ, H. M. (2024). Efficient white blood cell identification with hybrid inception-xception network. The Journal of Supercomputing, 80(17), 25155-25187. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06405-1. ●Alnssyan, B., Ahmad, Z., Malela-Majika, J. C., Seong, J. T., & Shafik, W. (2023). On the identifiability and statistical features of a new distributional approach with reliability applications. AIP Advances, 13(12). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0178555. ●Yang, Z., Jianjun, L., Faqiri, H., Shafik, W., Talal Abdulrahman, A., Yusuf, M., & Sharawy, A. M. (2021). Green internet of things and big data application in smart cities development. Complexity, 2021(1), 4922697. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/4922697.

• Shafik, W. (2026). The Dark Side of AI: Human and Societal Perspective. Springer, Singapore. https://link.springer.com/book/9789819672981.
• Shafik, W. (2026). Artificial Intelligence for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa. Chapman & Hall, Taylor & Francis. https://shorturl.at/egABe.  
• Shafik, W. (2026). Textbook of Green Growth and Technology: Balancing Ecology, Economy, and Equity. Sustainable Development and Biodiversity. Springer Singapore.https://link.springer.com/book/9789819536313.
• Shafik, W. (2025). Global Sustainable Transition with Inclusion: A Focus on the People with Disabilities and the Marginalized. Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://link.springer.com/book/9789819665563.
• Shafik, W. (2025). Next-Gen Solutions for Sustainable Agronomy: Application, Technologies, and Management. Physical Sciences. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, United Kingdom. https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-4965-0.
• Shafik, W. (2025). Factoring Technology in Global Sustainability: A Focus on the Sustainable Development Goals. Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://link.springer.com/book/9789819672981.  

Wasswa has attended several conferences such as;

• 2025 22nd International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology (ECTI-CON), 20-23 May 2025, Bangkok, Thailand^[5]
• IST-Africa 2024 Conference (IST-Africa) 20-24 May 2024, Dublin, Ireland^[6]
• 2023 8th International Conference on Information Technology and Digital Applications (ICITDA), 17-18 November 2023, Yogyakarta, Indonesia^[7]
• 2020 8th Iranian Joint Congress on Fuzzy and intelligent Systems (CFIS), 02-04 September 2020, Mashhad, Iran^[8]
• 2019 27th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE), 30 April 2019, Yazd, Iran^[9]
• 2019 Smart Grid Conference (SGC), 18-19 December 2019, Tehran, Iran^[10]
• 2019 5th International Conference on Web Research (ICWR), 24-25 April 2019, Tehran, Iran^[11]

• Official website
• Shafik's Dig Connectivity Research Laboratory (DCRLab) website
• Authority control databases: Academics: ORCID Scopus Google Scholar