09th Sep 2024: In Fall 2024 semester, I will be teaching two courses i.e. AI-832 Reinforcement Learning and CS-117 Applications of ICT.

05th Sep 2024: Our project titled "Design and Development of Quadruped Robot" has been selected for funding under the National Grassroots ICT Research Initiative (NGIRI) from Ignite - National Technology Fund.Congratulaions to the Hinata Kashif and Jawad Akbar for taking on this challenging project and seeing it through. 

29th Aug 2024: We are conducting a workshop on “da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) and the World of Medical Robotics (Part - I)” in collaboration with Dr. Adnan Munnawar and Dr. Peter Kazanzides from Johns Hopkins University.

19th Aug 2024: Today was a big day for me and our lab. My first MS student, Izma Naveed, has successfully defended her thesis today Alhumdulillah. In her thesis, titled Augmented Reality Based SLAM, Izma worked on the integration of AR with Hector SLAM to generate a map of the environment in real-time. The resulting map information, LIDAR data, and odometry was used in a motion controller that generated trajectories that were found to be much safer and smoother as compared to the existing state-of-the-art. In particular, there was a significant decrease in jerk and stress for all three experimental scenarios under consideration.

29th July - 05th Sep 2024: Conducted a short course on "High Impact IT Training" at IMCG F-7/4.

27th July 2024: I am honored to be a part of the National AI Task Force and one of the authors of the National AI Policy. I am looking forward to serving Pakistan in this capacity and integrating AI in a multitude of areas and disciplines to boost our economy.

08th July 2024: We are delighted to welcome an international student in our lab. Kareem Mahmoud from Egypt is going to do a three internship with us. During this internship, he is going to work on developing a Machine Learning based application for a 6-DOF robot manipulator.

07th July 2024: Served as Proctor for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) held at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad. 

05th - 22th July 2024: Attended a 2-week workshop on "Online Course Development" organized by NUST Connected Learning (NCL). 

24th-26th June 2024: Official 2-day visit to Karachi to explore research idea and collaboration with the maritime industry.

13th June 2024: Gave an invited talk on "Applications of AI" at Air Command and Staff School (AC&SS) in Badaber.

12th June 2024: Our research paper titled "A Comprehensive Multimodal Humanoid System for Personality Assessment Based on the Big Five Model" has been accepted for publication in IEEE Access (Q2, IF 3.9). This research was conducted by our student Anum Jaffar for her MS thesis. In this research, we were able to accurately predict all five personality traits of the Big Five model using non-verbal cues (facial expressions, head poses, body poses) of a human as he/she interacts with a humanoid robot. Experiments were conducted with 16 subjects who verbally interacted with the humanoid robot NAO. After the interaction, the participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The human-robot interaction data, questionnaire feedback, and expert perspectives were combined to deduce the Big Five traits. 

10th June 2024: I have been appointed as the Treasurer at IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Pakistan. I am very humbled and grateful for this opportunity. Looking forward to playing my role in promoting Robotics and AI in Pakistan in.sha.Allah.

29th May 2024: Gave a keynote talk on "NCAI on the forefronts of AI in Pakistan" at the Artificial Intelligence Conference and Expo 2024 (AICE) held at Pak Austria Fachhochschule: Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology (PAF-IAST), Haripur, Pakistan.

07th May 2024: A final year project I supervised, titled "4-DOF Robotic Arm for Industrial Automation", was declared the 1st overall best project out of the 38x total projects on display at SMME Open House 2024 and the team was awarded with a prize money of 50,000/- PKR. In this project, my students desiged and developed  a 4-DOF serial robotic arm that can pick and place payloads upto 1kg. The key features of this robot are its low weight, high speed and high precision. This is achieved through the use of lightweight high-performance materials like carbon fiber and aluminum to keep the inertia low, which in turn makes the robot's motion faster and more precise. The arm is designed to perform pick and place operation using suction mechanism. 

22nd Apr - 31st July 2024: Conducted a course on AI & Robotics with a class of 35x students under the umbrella of National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC).

02nd Feb 2024: I have been elected as an executive committee member of MEXT Alumni Association of Pakistan (MAAP). I will serve as Finance Secretary for the 2024-25 session. MAAP is the association of Pakistani scholars who have studied in Japan under MEXT scholarship. Its objectives include strengthening of friendly relationship between Japan and Pakistan through various means, and develop contacts with the MAAP scholars not only in Pakistan, but also in other countries, with the view of exchanging scholarly ideas, information and collaborations to benefit mutually and society at large.

09th January - 20th February 2024: Conducted a short course on Deep Learning during Certified AI Professionals (CAIP) course organized by National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI).

25th January 2024: During Spring 2024 semester, I will teach the course RIME-811: Robot Mechanics and Control

06th-17th November 2023: Conducted a 2-week Robotics workshop called ROBOGEN 2 at Lincoln Corner ITU in Fatima Jinnah University, Rawalpindi. This workshop was designed for 20 female students from government schools.

03rd-4th October 2023: Conducted a workshop titled "Generative AI: The Magic Behind ChatGPT" during the 3rd International Conference on Digital Futures and Transformative Technologies (ICoDT2) held at NUST. 

8th September 2023: In Fall 2022 semester, I will be teaching three courses i.e. RIME-837: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), RIME-411: Engineering Mechanics, and CS-114: Fundamentals of Programming.

09th August 2023: Attended the AI Task Force meeting chaired by Minister Ahsan Iqbal at Pakistan Secretariat, Islamabad and presented the recommendations as the lead for "AI in Manufacturing" team.

04th August 2023: I was invited to the premier of  "Ba'tie Girl" held at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) organized by Hunerkada Film & Media.

04th August 2023: Evaluated the projects of Robotics and AI bootcamp held at NCAI.

02nd August 2023: Our research paper "Dynamic Goal Tracking for Differential Drive Robot using Deep Reinforcement Learning" has been accepted in Springer Nature's journal Neural Processing Letters (Q2, impact factor 3.1).

26th July 2023: I appeared as a guest on SUNO FM 89.4's program Mornings with Danish. We discussed the prospects of IT and AI in Pakistan. Here is the video of that session. 

18th July 2023: Gave an invited talk on the topic, "Robotics & AI: My Journey So Far" to the student of AI Bootcamp organized by NCAI.

18th July 2023: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab the 2x member delegation from Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey.

18th July 2023: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to more than 200x students of NUST Summer School.

07th July 2023: We are delighted to welcome an international student in RISE Lab. Ahmed Ashraf Fareed from Egypt is going to do a one month internship with us. During this internship, he is going to work on Control of Mobile Robots in.sha.Allah.

05th July 2023: Gave an invited talk on the topic "The World After ChatGPT and Its Impact on Chem-Bio Defense" during the Seminar on Chem-Bio Threat & Response held at the National Centre for Physics, Islamabad.

02nd July 2023: Served as Proctor for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) held at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.

23rd June 2023: Conducted the written test and interviews of candidates for the Japanese Government (MEXT) scholarships for undergraduates studies at the Embassy of Japan in Pakistan.

21st-22nd June 2023: Conducted interviews of 33x candidates for the 10x Japanese Government (MEXT) scholarships for research students (MS & PhD) at the Embassy of Japan in Pakistan.

09th June 2023: Conducted interviews of 35x candidates for the 5x NUST-Coventry Master Student Placements (MSP) and 16x PhD positions.

07th-08th June 2023: Conducted the skills test of ~70 students of NUST for the Master Students Placement (MSP) and PhD scholarships at Coventry University.

05th-09th June 2023: Carried out my duties as the Lead from NUST for the NUST-Coventry Master Student Placement (MSP) program.

05th-09th June 2023: Taught a short course on "Practical Reinforcement Learning" with Prof. James Brusey (Coventry University) to 33x students. Here is the website of this course: https://sites.google.com/coventry.ac.uk/practicalreinforcementlearning

31st May 2023: Attended the Leaders in Islamabad Business Summit 2023: The Big Rethink held at Serena Hotel, Islamabad.

25th May 2023: A final year project I supervised, titled "Autonomous Weeding Mobile Robot", was declared the 3rd overall best project out of the 39x total projects on display at SMME Open House. The team was awarded with a prize money of 60,000/- PKR (30,000/- each by both BEMSOL Private Limited and Cowlar Inc.) . This project is from the domain of Agricultural Robotics. In this project, my students developed a mobile robot that could autonomously navigate in a field, detect weeds in it, and kill the weeds using laser without damaging the crop being cultivated in the field. 

26th April 2023: Attended the webinar of IEEE Standards Association on "Risk-Based Methodology for Deriving Scenarios for Testing Artificial Intelligence Systems".

06th April 2023: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to 25 students and 5 fellows of Teach for Pakistan (TFP) during their visit to NUST.

27th March 2023: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the Mid Semester Exams (MSE) at SMME, NUST from 27th-29th March 2023.

15th March 2021: Our research paper titled "Techno-Economic Analysis of Vacuum Membrane Distillation for Seawater Desalination" has been published by Membranes journal (impact factor 4.562 , Q1 Polymer Science).

13th January 2023: Served as Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST on 13th January 2023.

11th January 2023: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST from 11th-12th January 2023.

08th Dec 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to 6 students and 2 faculty members of Help in Need (Orphans) school during their visit to NUST.

15th-17th Nov 2022: I attended the IDEAS conference at Expo Center Karachi. I have served as the Associate Editor for this year's conference Alhumdulillah. 

09th Nov 2022: Attended a webinar on "How to Be a Peer Reviewer" organized by SAGE Publishing.

08th Nov 2022: A portion of my PhD thesis has been included as a chapter in the book "Human-Robot Collaborations in Industrial Automation" (ISBN 978-3-0365-5213-2) published by MDPI. 

30th Oct - 11th Nov 2022: Conducted a 2-week Rrobotics workshop called ROBOGEN at Lincoln Corner ITU at Arfa Tower, Lahore. This workshop was designed for 20 female students from government schools.

18th October 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE Lab to Prof. Konstantinos Salonitis, Deputy Director Manufacturing & Materials Theme and Head of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems, Cranfield University, UK .

10th October 2022: I attended the talk of Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan at NUST.

27th Sep 2022: I attended the IEEE Metaverse Congress: Developing and Deploying the Metaverse.

16th Sep 2022: I have been appointed as a Co-Prinicpal Investigator of the Intelligent Robotics Lab (IRL) at the National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI).

15th Sep 2022: A final year project I supervised titled "Autonomous Mobile Robot for Picking and Placing Packages in a Warehouse" has been selected for funding by Ignite National Grassroots Research Initiative (NGIRI).

25th Aug 2022: I have been given the additional responsibility of Post Graduate (PG) Coordinator for the Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at NUST.

20th Aug 2022: In Fall 2022 semester, I will be teaching two courses i.e. RIME-837: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), and EE-103: Electrical Engineering.

01st Aug 2022: I was interviewed by NHK-Urdu Radio about my study and research experience in Japan.

22nd July 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to 65 students and 9 faculty members of NJV Higher Secondary School (Karachi) during their visit to NUST.

19th July 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to more than 100  participants of  NUST Summer School.

06th June 2022: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST from 6th-10th January.  

30th-31st March 2022: Served as Exhibits Chair for the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence  (ICAI 2022).

30th March 2022: Chaired a session during the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence  (ICAI 2022).

02nd Mar 2022: Attended the training program on Public Speaking arranged by Professional Development Center (PDC), NUST. 

24th Feb 2022: Presented the projects of RISE lab to 45 students and 9 faculty members of Cadet College Mastung during their visit to NUST.

19th Feb 2022: Reviewed 5 papers for the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence  (ICAI 2022).

11th Feb 2022:  Evaluated the Final Year Projects of Mechanical engineering students (batch ME-10) of SMME, NUST.

31st Jan 2022: In the Spring 2022 semester, I am teaching two courses i.e. RIME-816: Robot Design and RM-898: Research Methodology.

26th Jan 2022:  Presented our research paper titled "An Adaptive Nuero-Fuzzy Inference System to Solve Perceptual Aliasing for Autonomous Mobile Robots" at the 27th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB 2022).

21st Jan 2022: Attended the Annual General Meeting of IEEE Islamabad Section at Islamabad Club.

10th Jan 2022: Participated in the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) Working group for IEEE P3107™ Standard Terminology for Human-Robot Interaction.

10th Jan 2022: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST from 10th-14th January. 

19th Dec 2021: Alhumdulillah. Our research paper "A Real-Time Motion Planning Scheme for Collaborative Robots using HRI-based Cost Function" has become the most read paper in the history of International Journal of Mechatronics and Automation (IJMA).

04th Dec 2021: Our research paper titled "A Human-Following Motion Planning and Control Scheme for Collaborative Robots Based on Human Motion Prediction" has been published by Sensors journal (impact factor 3.567, Q1 Instrumentation).

23rd Nov 2021: I got a chance to talk about Artificial Intelligence, its applications and its prospects in Pakistan in the program "Suno Morning with Danish" on Suno FM 89.4. You can watch the video of that session here.

08th Oct 2021: I have been nominated to represent my department at NUSTxKarachi 2021 at DHA Country & Golf Club, Karachi, Pakistan. I will present our project "Sakura Wheelchair".

13th Sep 2021: In the Fall 2021 semester, I will teach three courses i.e. EE-103 Electrical Engineering, ME-489 Robotics and Automation, and RIME-837 Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM).

01st Sep 2021: I have been appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Sector H-12, Islamabad, Pakistan.

22nd Aug 2021: An emotional moment for me. I have returned to Pakistan after staying in Japan for 7 years. May Allah give me the strength, courage and vision to serve my country well.

02nd Aug 2021: I have just received the second dose of moderna vaccine. This completes the covid-19 vaccination process for me.

19th Mar 2021: Our research paper titled "A real-time motion planning scheme for collaborative robots using HRI-based cost function" has been published in the Internationl Journal of Mechatronics and Automation (IJMA).