Research Interest and Other Contributions

Research Interest: Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Metaverse, QoE, Machine Learning, AI Healthcare, 360-degree Videos, HCI, Image/Video Processing, and Evaluation

Muhammad Shahid Anwar is currently working as an assistant professor at Gachon University (Department of AI & Software), Seongnam, South Korea. He received a PhD degree in Information and Communication Engineering from the School of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2021 with a thesis titled "QoE Evaluation of 360-degree Virtual Reality Videos.". Previously, he received an M.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Technology from Aston University, Birmingham, U.K., in 2012, with the research dissertation "End-to-end multimedia transmission in a heterogeneous network.". His research interests include 360-degree videos, virtual reality (VR), and quality of experience (QoE) evaluations. He currently focuses on machine learning-based QoE prediction for 360-degree videos. 

His research interest is the measurement, modelling, and evaluation of the QoE of traditional videos and 360-degree Virtual Reality Videos. He is focusing on deep learning-based VR video evaluations. He has developed several machine-learning-based prediction models. Several approaches are adopted for overall QoE evaluation, such as subjective and objective assessment, behavioural assessment, and psychophysiological assessment. Several Machine learning algorithms have been utilized for QoE prediction, such as Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, Decision Trees, and k-nearest neighbours. Currently, his research focus at Gachon University is to evaluate virtual human assistants, VR remote health, and 360-degree telemedicine systems. The main research activities are investigating the Influencing factor and different aspects that affect the QoE of telemedicine and remote health systems. Dr Shahid is passionate about user research and user involvement in user-centric innovation processes and the activities are linked to human-technology experiences (Quality of Experience, User Engagement, and immersive experiences) and human-technology behaviour, related methodological challenges. He also worked on QoE measurement and QoE-based optimization to foster user delight, reduce user annoyance, and enable pleasurable experiences. The system, human, and context factors influencing QoE for a range of applications and in different domains (e.g., 360-degree Virtual Reality Videos and immersive media, interactive services, and assistive technology in healthcare) were considered during the research. Different QoE influencing factors for 360-degree videos and aspects such as perceptual quality, immersion and presence, cybersickness, reality judgment, user engagement, and attention captivation were evaluated during several subjective experiments. Dr. Shahid has authored or co-authored more than 80 publications, including IEEE, Springer, IET, Hindawi MDPI, Frontiers journals, and flagship conference papers. He has been honoured with the “Outstanding Scholar of the Year 2020 Award" from the CSC Scholarship Council under the Ministry of Education in China. He also received the “Excellent Student of the Year 2020 Award" from the Beijing Institute of Technology, China.