Vasileios Vonikakis
Dipl.Eng (B.Eng.&M.Sc.), PhD
I am a Senior Solution Architect for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Singapore. I help AWS customers and partners to design and build successful AI/ML applications in the AWS cloud.
I have diverse experience in building and deploying AI/ML systems across multiple use-cases and industries. In the past I have worked as a senior researcher and team leader, focusing on IP creation and commercialization of technology, in the fields of Computer Vision and Image Processing, across both academic and industrial R&D environments.
Between 2010-2012, I was a researcher for the University of Rome “Sapienza” and the CRAS Institute of Aerospace Research, where I developed medical-grade image processing software for mammographic images. Between 2012-2017 I worked as a Research Scientist in the Advanced Digital Sciences Center (ADSC), a research institute of the University of Illinois (UIUC) and A*Star, developing and commercializing computer vision technologies for face analysis and image quality assessment. Between 2017-2020 I was a Senior Principal Engineer in Panasonic Industrial Devices technology center (Singapore), where I led an engineering team in developing AI technologies for human sensing and industrial visual inspection.
Research Experience
Machine Learning
Neural Networks
Learning with small unbalanced datasets
Computer Vision
Industrial Visual Inspection
Facial Expression Analysis / Affective Computing
Facial Landmark Detection and Tracking
Near-Duplicate Image Detection
Image Retrieval
Crowdsourcing
Image Processing - Digital Imaging
HDR imaging
Image Enhancement
Medical Image Processing
Human Visual System
Brightness, Lightness and Color perception
Color Constancy
Saliency - Attention models
On the Media
Appeared in a recap of CES2019 by the Hospitality-Upgrade website, sharing my views about facial expression analysis technologies: https://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/ces-2019
Appeared on a panel for the BBC show "Talking Business" with Karishma Vaswani. The show was recorded during the 1st Singapore Deep Learning Summit. The discussion was focused on the potential impact of Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, on businesses and the economy. You can find the interview on the following archive: https://archive.org/details/BBCNEWS_20170107_203000_Talking_Business
Article on Facial Expression Analysis: http://adsc.illinois.edu/news/newly-developed-software-can-interpret-emotions-real-time
Articles on Fashion Image Retrieval: http://www.csl.illinois.edu/news/researchers-develop-powerful-fashion-optimized-image-search-tool
Academic Awards
Best reviewer award (VCIP 2016)
2nd place in the EmotiW2016 group happiness estimation challenge (ICMI2016)
3rd place in the EmotiW2015 emotion recognition challenge (ICMI2015)
Best reviewer award (ICME 2014)
2nd place in Grand Challenge Competition (ACM Multimedia 2012)
Finalist (countrywide) in the Velti mobile demo day competition (2011)
IET Image Processing Premium award (2009)
Best Paper Award in Computer Vision Applications (PSIVT 2007)