Ahmad Bittar

September 2022 - present:

•  Assistant Professor at Université de Technologie de Troyes

• E-mail: ahmad'dot'bitar'at'utt'dot'fr 

Education

CentraleSupélec | Université Paris-Saclay

• MS in Applied mathematics for finance (advisor(s): Ioane Muni Toke): acceptance rate 12.5%

  • 3rd year cursus-CentraleSupélec (dominante MDS, mention MMF, parcours Finance)

  • 13 courses + English + final study project + internship

  • Main course: stochastic calculus

National University of Singapore

• Exchange student (faculty of engineering)

CentraleSupélec | Université Paris-Saclay

• PhD in (statistical) signal and image processing (advisor(s): Jean-Philippe Ovarlez and Loong-Fah Cheong)

Research Interests 

Hyperspectral target detection, image processing, statistics, sparse and low-rank matrix decomposition, applied regression analysis, financial mathematics.

Talks/Seminars

27 Mar 2023 Université de Technologie de Troyes, Troyes France " Are the targets detected because they are targets? An application to hyperspectral imagery ". 

23  Oct 2018 American University of Beirut, Beirut Lebanon " What would you like to see beyond your biological vision? ". 

17 Jan 2017 The French Aerospace Lab (ONERA), Palaiseau France " Exploitation of sparsity for hyperspectral target detection ". 

2 Feb 2017 CentraleSupélec, Gif-sur-Yvette France " A new method for detecting camouflage targets in hyperspectral imagery: application to real data " 

Publications

Technical Reports

1. Ahmad W. Bitar, Nathan De Carvalho, Valentin Gatignol, “Covariance matrix estimation for robust portfolio allocation”, March 2023. [PDF]

2. Ahmad W. Bitar, Ali Chehab and Jean-Philippe Ovarlez, “Comments on « Automatic Target Detection for Sparse Hyperspectral Images » by Ahmad W. Bitar et al.”, Jun 2020. [PDF]

Book Chapters

1. Ahmad W. Bitar, Jean-Philippe Ovarlez, Loong-Fah Cheong and Ali Chehab, “Automatic Target Detection for Sparse Hyperspectral Images”,  Hyperspectral Image Analysis - Advances in Signal Processing and Machine Learning, Springer, Editors: Saurabh Prasad, Jocelyn Chanussot, accepted Sep 2019 (To appear in May-June 2020). [PDF]

2. Ahmad W. Bitar, Mohamad M. Mansour and Ali Chehab “Algorithmic Optimizations in the HMAX Model Targeted for Efficient Object Recognition” , Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, pp 374-395, Springer, Editors: José Braz, Julien Pettré, Paul Richard, Andreas Kerren, Lars Linsen, Sebastiano Battiato, and Francisco Imai, 2015. [PDF]

Refereed Journals

1. Ahmad W. Bitar, Loong-Fah Cheong and Jean-Philippe Ovarlez, “Sparse and Low-Rank Matrix Decomposition for Automatic Target Detection in Hyperspectral Imagery”, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 57, no. 8, pp. 5239-5251, Aug 2019. [PDF] [MATLAB CODE]

2. Ahmad W. Bitar, Rony Darazi, Jean-François Couchot and Raphaël Couturier, “Blind digital watermarking in PDF documents using Spread Transform Dither Modulation”, Multimed Tools Appl, 76: 143, Springer, 2015. [PDF]

Refereed Conferences

1. Ahmad W. Bitar, Loong-Fah Cheong and Jean-Philippe Ovarlez, “Target and Background Separation in Hyperspectral Imagery for Automatic Target Detection”, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (IEEE ICASSP’18), pp. 1598-1602, 2018. [PDF] [MATLAB CODE]

2. Ahmad W. Bitar, Loong-Fah Cheong and Jean-Philippe Ovarlez, “Simultaneous sparsity-based binary hypothesis model for real hyperspectral target detection",  IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (IEEE ICASSP'17), pp. 4616-4620, 2017. [PDF]

3. Ahmad W. Bitar, Jean-Philippe Ovarlez and Loong-Fah Cheong, “Sparsity-based Cholesky Factorization and Its Application to Hyperspectral Anomaly Detection ”, IEEE 7th International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (IEEE CAMSAP'17), pp. 1-5, 2017. [PDF]

4. Ahmad W. Bitar, Jean-Philippe Ovarlez and Loong-Fah Cheong, “Exploitation de la parcimonie par la factorisation de Cholesky et son application pour la détection d’anomalies en imagerie hyperspectrale ”, GRETSI, XXVIème Colloque, 2017. [PDF]

5. Ahmad W. Bitar, Mohamad Mansour and Ali Chehab, “Efficient Implementation of a Recognition System Using the Cortex Ventral Stream Model", In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (VISAPP'15), pp. 138-147, 2015. [PDF]

Outside of the work

I love spending time playing piano, so I can say that piano is my second best friend (after my mother). My favorite pieces to play are: " Liebestraum no. 3 " for Liszt, " Valse op.69 no.2 " for Chopin, " Impromptu op.90 no.4 " for Schubert, and " Nocturne op.48 no.1 " for Chopin. However, my favorite composer is Mozart and I also play some of his pieces and I adore listening to his music because it makes me optimistic. I go mad when I am inactive, so I always find something to do. I am addicted to the Lebanese and Italian foods.