A Chat with Dr. Maryam R. Aliabadi: Computer Scientist, Cybersecurity and AI Researcher, and Educator; CEO & Co-Founder of Kids Shield Services Inc., Advancing Digital Safety for Children and Youth

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Dr. Maryam R. Aliabadi.

Dr. Maryam R. Aliabadi is a cybersecurity scholar, educator, and the CEO & Co-Founder of Kids Shield Services Inc. Dr. Aliabadi holds a joint Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, with advanced research roots at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is currently a full-time cybersecurity faculty member at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) and a sessional faculty member in Computer Science at UBC.

With over a decade of international experience spanning advanced research and development, software engineering, cloud architecture, and IT project management, Dr. Aliabadi has built a multidisciplinary career focused on designing resilient, intelligent systems to solve complex technological and societal safety challenges.

Throughout her career, Dr. Aliabadi has been driven by a simple question: How can technology be designed not only to connect people, but also to protect them? From securing cyber-physical systems and critical infrastructure to developing AI-powered safety technologies for children, her work reflects a consistent commitment to applying advanced computing research to real-world societal challenges. This mission ultimately led to the creation of Kids Shield Services Inc., where she is developing next-generation digital safety infrastructure for youth in online environments.

As the founder and technical lead of the Kids Shield research initiative and its flagship platform, Guardian Sphere, she directs the engineering of next-generation multimodal machine learning frameworks designed to identify anomalous behavioral patterns and proactively secure real-time digital communication channels.

Her long-term research mission focuses on leveraging artificial intelligence as a powerful vehicle for human well-being, critical infrastructure resilience, digital trust, and accessible computing education.