Dr. Abdullah Z. Sheikh

Professor & Dean
School of Business Studies
E-mail: azsheikh at iba.edu.pk

Dr. Abdullah Z. Sheikh is a Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior, and currently serves as the Dean of the School of Business Studies at IBA Karachi. He holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham, UK, an MBA from Kennesaw State University, USA, and a BS degree from Southern Tech, USA.

Under Dr. Sheikh’s leadership, the School of Business Studies successfully earned AACSB accreditation in February 2025. With nearly two decades of experience engaging with AACSB standards and accreditation frameworks, he has contributed to similar efforts at various universities around the world.

Dr. Sheikh’s career spans multiple continents, reflecting a rich and diverse international background. He has held full-time faculty positions at prestigious institutions, including the University of Nottingham in the UK and several leading universities in the Middle East. Additionally, he has served in academic roles such as PhD supervisor at the University of East London and PhD examiner for doctoral candidates in British and Australian universities.

A well-published scholar, Dr. Sheikh has contributed to top-tier journals in the fields of HR and Organizational Behavior, including the International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Applied Psychology, Labor History, and Employee Relations. His research was selected for submission by the University of East London to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014-an official government initiative that evaluates the quality of academic research and influences public research funding allocations. Dr. Sheikh has also served as a Rapporteur for the UK’s prestigious ‘Economic and Social Research Council’ (ESRC), where he assessed the quality of publicly funded research projects.

Dr. Asma Hyder

Professor & Dean
School of Economics and Social Sciences
E-mail: ahyder at iba.edu.pk

Dr. Asma Hyder is a Professor of Economics and Dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences. Dr. Hyder is also a former Member Social Sector & Devolution at Planning Commission, Pakistan. She is a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding. She completed her Postdoctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She was a research fellow and affiliate at Sussex University, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), and Carleton University, Canada. Most of her research attempts to explore wage distributions, labor markets, and household behaviors. Her major contribution to the Economics literature is based on household behaviors during a crisis in the world's most impoverished societies. Her work on an international study, 'Young Lives (YL),' and 'Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health' (MLSFH) explores the impact of climate change on child wellbeing outcomes, i.e. cognitive and non-cognitive skills, health and food consumption, is highly cited in Economics literature. She won the grant on 'Happiness in a Developing Society', which significantly contributed to the national debate on the subject.

Dr. Shakeel A. Khoja

Professor & Dean
School of Mathematics and Computer Science
E-mail: skhoja at iba.edu.pk

Dr. Shakeel Khoja is a Professor of Computer Science at the IBA Karachi, and a Commonwealth Academic Fellow. He holds a PhD and Postdoctorate from the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK. His area of research includes the development of e-learning frameworks and digital libraries, information retrieval, and application of multimedia tools over the internet.

He has worked as a Lead Researcher and Project Manager for various research projects at the IBA Karachi and the University of Southampton. He has worked for the British Council as a lead consultant to evaluate their funded research projects across Pakistan. He is on various committees of HEC for project evaluation, curriculum development, and accreditation. He is also serving as an accreditation expert for Pakistan Engineering Council. At the IBA Karachi, he has served as Chairperson, Department of Computer Science from 2014 till 2020 and heads the Web Science Research Lab. He has been awarded the 'Best Teacher Award' by HEC in 2004 and 2012, and 'Best Researcher Award' by the IBA in 2014.

He carries an overall professional experience of around 25 years and has over 50 research publications to his credit.