Dr. Barnali Gupta Banik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Calcutta and has more than eighteen years of professional experience across academia, the IT industry in India and the UK, and government-funded research. She has also held positions as a Research Scientist at CR Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science and as a Blockchain Research Manager at KNNX Corp. Her research interests include information security, cryptography, steganography, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence. She has authored more than forty-seven peer-reviewed publications, contributed to book chapters, and holds three patents (one national and two international). An IEEE Senior Member and an active member of the Cryptology Research Society of India, she has delivered invited talks, organized faculty development programs, and supervised doctoral and postgraduate research.