Technology Innovation Institute’s Dr. Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar On How Abu Dhabi Is Enabling Breakthrough Innovation

As robotics and autonomous systems move from concept to reality, the UAE is emerging as an active player in the field, with pioneering research at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi helping drive this shift.

Dr. Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar, Chief Researcher at TII’s Secure Systems Research Center, underscored this momentum in a conversation with Inc. Arabia at this year’s GITEX Global in Dubai, during which he said, “What we’ve built, nobody in the world has it today.”

At TII, Dr. Thakkar leads advanced research initiatives focused on zero-trust end-to-end security, resilience, and safety in cyber-physical and autonomous systems platforms that leverage generative artificial intelligence and large language models.

Under his leadership, Dr. Thakkar’s team has successfully demonstrated and commercialized a system integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and human first responders.

Dr. Thakkar’s team has also developed zero-trust mobile platforms featuring secure applications for smartphones and laptops, which, as per the TII website, are currently in the commercialization phase.

Such milestones, Dr. Thakkar noted, highlight how the UAE capital has built a research ecosystem designed not just for experimentation, but for deployment at scale. As he put it: “Abu Dhabi is really a place that allows a lot of innovation.”

Check out the full video for more of Dr. Thakkar’s insights.