Yousri Kessentini' Homepage
Yousri Kessentini
Senior researcher at CRNS & head of DeepVision research team
Certified as an official Deep Learning instructor & ambassador from NVIDIA DLI
Email: yousri.kessentini<at>crns.rnrt.tn
yousri.kessentini<at>gmail.com
Phone: +216 74863042 Fax: +216 74863041
Address: CRNS, Technopole of Sfax, PO Box 275, Sakiet Ezzit, 3021 Sfax, Tunisia.
I am currently an Associate Professor at the Digital Research Center of Sfax (CRNS) and Head of the DeepVision research team. I earned my Ph.D. in Pattern Recognition from the University of Rouen, France, in 2009, and later worked as a postdoctoral researcher at ITESOFT and the LITIS Laboratory from 2011 to 2013.
In 2025, I received the Maathai Impact Award at Deep Learning Indaba, the premier annual gathering of Africa’s machine learning and AI community. Since 2018, I have been a certified instructor and ambassador of the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, delivering advanced AI training to academia, industry, and government organizations.
My research focuses on artificial intelligence, deep learning, computer vision, and document analysis and recognition. I have contributed to numerous research and technology transfer projects and authored over 65 papers in international conferences and journals. I also serve as an editor and reviewer for several leading AI conferences and journals and remains passionate about using AI to address societal challenges while nurturing the next generation of AI talent in Africa and beyond.
The Middle East and North Africa Machine Learning (MenaML) Winter School is back to empower the next generation of AI leaders. Following the success of 2025 program, the second edition will be hosted in partnership with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
More information: https://www.mena.ml
Winner of the Maathai Impact Award at Deep Learning Indaba 2025
I am honored to receive the Wangari Maathai Impact Award for my work in Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage and Historical Document Preservation. This recognition highlights the societal and cultural impact of my research and underscores my commitment to leveraging AI to preserve history, protect heritage, and make cultural knowledge accessible for future generations.
🎥 Video of the award announcement: [link]
New accepted paper in Expert Systems with Applications (IF=7.5, Q1)
Our paper UCL-MHTR: A Unified Continual Learning System for Multilingual Handwritten Text Recognition has been accepted in Expert Systems with Applications jourmal. This work was carried out in the context of the IntelliDOC project at the Digital Research Center of Sfax, in partnership with InstaDeep, and in collaboration with the Computer Vision Center of Barcelona.
You can access it using this link: [Link]
New accepted paper in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence jourmal (IF=7.5, Q1)
Our paper Information extraction from multi-layout invoice images using FATURA dataset has been accepted in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence jourmal.
You can access it using this link: [Link]
The dataset is freely accessible for researchers and practitioners at: https://zenodo.org/records/8261508
New accepted paper in WACV conference (Rank A)
Our paper Graph Neural Networks for End-to-End Information Extraction from Handwritten Documents has been accepted in Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV'2024).
You can access it using this link: [Link]
New accepted paper in Neurocmputing (Q1, IF=6)
Our paper A Two-stream SpatioTemporal Fusion Transformer for Very High Resolution Satellites Images has been published in the Neurocomputing journal in October 2023.
You can access it using this link: [Link]
New accepted paper in the AAAI'2023 conference (Rank A*)
Our paper Text-DIAE: A Self-Supervised Degradation Invariant Autoencoder for Text Recognition and Document Enhancement has been accepted in the Thirty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'2023).
AAAI is one of the leading international academic conference in AI ranked A*.
This year 8,777 papers have been submitted. The overall acceptance rate is 19.6%.
Link to our paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.04814
New accepted paper in Pattern Recognition Letters Journal (Q1, IF=5.1)
New accepted paper in ESWA journal (Q1, IF=8.665)
New accepted paper in Pattern Recognition Letters Journal (Q1, IF=5.1)
The version 2 of DE-GAN is now published in the Pattern Recognition Journal (Q1, IF=8.518)
In this paper "Enhance to read better: A Multi-Task Adversarial Network for Handwritten Document Image Enhancement", we present an improved Generative Adversarial Network for Handwritten Document Image Enhancement based on multi-task learning. The proposed architecture integrates a handwritten text recognizer that promotes the generated document image to be more readable. [Link] [arxiv] [DOI]
New accepted paper in ESWA journal (Q1, IF=8.665)
our paper "Pansharpening approach via two-stream detail injection based on relativistic generative adversarial networks" has been published in the journal Expert Systems with Applications (Q1, IF=6.954).
You can download it for free using this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1dxi73PiGTI070
The link is valid until December 09, 2021
New accepted paper in NCAA journal IF 5.606
Our paper Domain and writer adaptation of offline Arabic handwriting recognition using deep neural networks is accepted for publication in Neural Computing and Applications (NCAA), September 2021. Impact Factor: 5.606
I defended my habilitation to supervised research (Habilitation Universitaire)
I obtained my habilitation degree (Habilitation Universitaire) on 21th May 2021 from the university of Sfax.
Title : Contributions au traitement automatique des images de documents et de scènes à l'ère de l'apprentissage profond.
The MedPRAI proceeding book is online
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th Mediterranean Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, MedPRAI 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in December 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online.The 24 revised papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers are covering the topics of recent advancements in different areas of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence.
New accepted paper in Applied Soft Computing
Our paper "Federated learning for COVID-19 screening from Chest X-ray images" is accepted in Applied Soft Computing journal, Mars 2021. Impact Factor=8.263, Q1
In this work, we present a collaborative federated learning framework allowing multiple medical institutions screening COVID-19 from Chest X-ray images using deep learning without sharing patient data. We investigate several key properties and specificities of federated learning setting including the not independent and identically distributed (non-IID) and unbalanced data distributions that naturally arise.
Our grant proposal is accepted – STINT Sweden
Our Project “DocPRESERV: Preserving & Processing Historical Document Images with Artificial Intelligence” is accepted in the Initiation Grants for Internationalisation program financed by STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education).
Partner: Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona (Sweden)
Best Student Paper Award at ICPR'2020
Our paper “A Few-shot Learning Approach for Historical Encoded Manuscript Recognition" won the Best Student Paper Award at the 25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition.The Overall Oral acceptance rate in ICPR’20220 is 4,4% (144 over 3250 submissions)
Link to our paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12577
Other news...
New accepted paper in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Our paper "Two stages Pan-sharpening Details Injection Approach based on very Deep Residual Networks" is accepted in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS), August 2020.Impact Factor: 5.855
Posted Aug 18, 2020, 3:27 AM by Yousri Kessentini
Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal: Special issue I am a Guest Editor of the special issue on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence based Multimedia Systems and Applications in Multimedia Tools and Applications journal.Link: https://www.springer.com/journal/11042/updates/17859710
Posted May 5, 2020, 8:32 AM by Yousri Kessentini
We organize the 4th edition of MedPRAI The 4th edition of MedPRAI will be held in Hammamet (Tunisia) from 20 to 22 December 2020. MedPRAI is organized by the Digital Research Center of Sfax (CRNS) and MIRACL laboratory.Link : https://medprai2020.sciencesconf.org/
Posted Feb 23, 2020, 11:14 AM by Yousri Kessentini
Organization of the second edition of IndabaX Tunisia It has been my honor and privilege to act as the Chairman of the of the second edition of IndabaX Deep Learning Tunisia, and this on Saturday, June 29, 2019 at the Sakiet Ezzit Culture House, Sfax.This prestigious conference is an event that aims to highlight the latest advances in Deep Learning, strengthen links between community experts and promote its application in different fields.Link of the event: https://indabaxsfax-18.webself.net/
