EDUCATION

PhD, Machine Learning & Signal Processing, Aug 2018 – June 2022
Tampere University, Finland

Research visit Feb-March 2022
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA

MS, Electronics Engineering, Aug 2013 – Dec 2015
Sabanci University Istanbul, Turkey (1st year)
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands (2nd year)

BS, Telecom Engineering (cum laude graduate), Aug 2008 – Aug 2012
FAST-National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences Pakistan

HONORS and AWARDS

• Honorable mention at the 2023 Photonics & Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS) for a co-authored paper titled "Improved Active Fire Detection using Operational U-Nets."

• Honorable mention from the City of Tampere for Technical Creativity of the Year 2022 for developing a framework for early heart attack detection using multi-view echocardiography.

• Post Docs in Companies program (PoDoCo) 2023 award/grant recipient for “Brain neural-like analysis of multimodal data via groundbreaking Machine Learning and AI solutions” at Haltian (Funded by: Foundation for Economic Education)

• Finnish Foundation for Technology Promotion (2022) award/grant recipient (Theme: Disruptive technologies and technologies for smarter everyday life)

• Nokia Foundation 2020 award/grant recipient

• Fully funded scholarship recipient for MS electronics engineering

• Selected by Sabanci University to study 2nd year of masters at Delft University of Technology Netherlands under the scope of Socrates Erasmus

• Best teaching assistant incentive award (Sabanci University Istanbul, fall 2013)

• Cum laude Graduate of FAST NUCES (above 3.5/4 Cumulative GPA in BS)

• Three silver medals during BS at FAST NUCES (2nd position in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd semester)

• 6 certificates of Dean’s Honor List on scoring Semester GPA above 3.5/4 at FAST NUCES during BS degree

• Chosen by the Ministry of Science & Technology, Pakistan, as the country's inaugural delegate to the 54th London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF) in 2012. Participated in seminars and workshops at Imperial College London, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge, as part of LIYSF.

• Merit scholarship recipient at high school for being the top student of the batch.

Activities

• • Coordinator: Summer School on Trustworthy AI 2023 at Tampere University.

  • Participant: Winter school 2023 "Advanced Methods for Mathematical Image Analysis" at the University of Bologna, Italy.

  • Invited Talk (Onsite): Presented "Subspace Learning for One-Class Classification" at the University of Florida, Nov 2022.

  • Student ambassador: Delft University of Technology Signal and System Track, Aug 2014 – Aug 2015

  • General Secretary: “NUTEC 10” all Pakistan technology competition at FAST NUCES, Aug 2011-Aug 2012

  • Social worker and Founder Vice president: Young Pakistan Social Welfare Society, Aug 2008-current

  • Conferences/events participation: NUTEC2008, Softec2011, LIYSF2012, Eusipco2015, ERF2018, ICPR2018, WellComp2020, SSCI2020.

Membership

• • IEEE Member Finland section, March 2019- Current

  • IEEE Biometrics Council member, March 2019- Current 

  • IEEE Young Professionals, March 2019- Current

  • IEEE Signal Processing Society, January 2019- Dec 2022 

  • Computer Vision and Pattern Analysis Laboratory (VPA LAB) Sabanci University, Aug 2013 – Jan 2016

  • Machine Intelligence for Speech Audio and Multimedia (MISAM) research group, Aug 2013 – Jan 2016

  • Pattern Recognition Laboratory (PR-LAB) Delft University of Technology, Aug 2014 – Aug 2015

PEDAGOGY/ TEACHING/ SUPERVISING EXPERIENCE

• Pedagogy Courses/Training: 

• Teaching and learning in higher education (10ECTS, completed), 

• Essentials of Doctoral Supervision (1ECTS, completed), 

• Academic supervision and guidance, Participation in teaching (5ECTS, completed),

• Participatory development project (5ECTS, currently enrolled),

• Curriculum and educational development (5 ECTS, currently enrolled).

• Supervising experience: 

Actively co-supervising and mentoring 2 master’s students on topics related to Machine learning and data science.

• Co-supervised MS thesis completed:

o “Credit Card Fraud Detection using One-Class Classification Algorithms" by Zaffar, Zaffar (2023)

Teaching at Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
Sep 2017 – Current

• Served as head of teaching assistants and helped in managing image and video processing course (~80 students).

• Conducted weekly computer lab sessions for a group of 15-20 students to help them implement various algorithms for image and video processing course for 5 academic terms.

Teaching at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
Sep 2013 – Jul 2014 / Sep 2015 – Dec 2016

• Conducted weekly sessions for a group of ~30 undergraduate students to discuss and provide solutions regarding math Math-101 (Calculus 1), Math-102 (Calculus 2), and Math-202 (Differential Equations) for three different academic terms, respectively.

• Conducted weekly lab sessions for students of CS 412/512 (Machine Learning) to implement basic classification algorithms during weekly recitation sessions during fall 2015.