Dr. Rita Chhikara is currently working as the Head and Professor with the Department of CSE. A target driven, dedicated professional with more than 23 years of experience in teaching, administration and research. She holds a B.E Degree from Pune University, M.Tech from Punjab Technical University and Ph.D. Degree from The NorthCap University in the area of Machine Learning and Information Security. She is EICT and IIT Roorkee Certified Data Science Professional. She has completed two DST sponsored projects in the area of Steganalysis and Dementia. She has completed one project on Malware Analysis using Machine Learning for a Govt. Organisation. She is nodal officer for PhD Visvesvaraya Scheme 2023 at NCU.  Her current areas of research include Data Mining, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Image Processing, and Deep Learning. She has been instrumental in imparting training in the latest programming language for Data Science to Government officials. She has published around 67 papers in peer-reviewed International Journals with good indexing and reputed national/international conference proceedings and published a book on Intelligent Healthcare: Applications of AI in eHealth in Springer. Her belief of sharing knowledge led her to deliver talks on emerging topics of Machine Learning in various reputed conferences, FDPs and Ted-Ed events. Her administrative responsibilities as NIRF nodal officer and NAAC coordinator has contributed in improving visibility of the University. Recipient of Teaching and Research Excellence National Award, certificate of appreciation for Judge Toyacathon 2021 organized by Ministry of Education, Recognition award from IEI 2023 and Star performer award at NCU 2023, she believes that “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled”. She has chaired various sessions in Springer, IEEE and Elsevier conferences in India, Malaysia and Singapore. She has guided around 40 B. Tech projects, 16 M.Tech theses, 3 Ph.D Scholars and currently supervising 7 Ph.D. Scholars. She is a professional member of ISTE, ACM, IEEE, and IEI and her perseverance and expertise has helped us grow as one of the top colleges in Haryana.