Zobaer Islam
Wireless Sensing, Machine learning, Medical Imaging
About Me
I am a Bangladeshi by birth, currently living in the United States of America. I have earned PhD in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University (OSU), Stillwater, Oklahoma. Currently, I am conducting multidisciplinary research on image analysis with machine learning for medical applications at UNC, Chapel Hill as a postdoc.
At OSU, I worked as a member of OSU Wireless Laboratory (OSU), directed by my PhD advisor, Dr. Sabit Ekin with a research focus on wireless sensing and machine learning. Additionally, I taught undergraduate students in their laboratory sessions as a teaching assistant at OSU.
My official first name: Md Zobaer (Preferred first name: Zobaer)
My last name: Islam
Phonetic transcription: /zoʊˈbɑːer ˈɪslɑːm/
Important Academic Events
July 25, 2024: First journal paper in medical imaging domain titled "Noncontact Respiratory Anomaly Detection Using Infrared Light-Wave Sensing" has been published in Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging. (Official link, pdf)
June 21, 2024: Conference paper titled "Analysis and Empirical Validation of Visible Light Path Loss Model for Vehicular Sensing and Communication" presented in ICNC2024 has been published. (IEEEXplore link, pdf)
May 27, 2024: Presented a conference paper titled "Evolutionary Optimization of 1D-CNN for Non-contact Respiration Pattern Classification" at NAFIPS2024 at South Padre Island, TX (ArXiv link).
April 15, 2024: First authored journal paper titled "Noncontact Respiratory Anomaly Detection Using Infrared Light-Wave Sensing" has been published in IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems. (IEEEXplore link, pdf)
April 10, 2024: Presented a poster paper titled "Respiratory Anomaly Detection using Infrared Light-wave Signals" at Wireless Telecommunications Symposium 2024 at Oakland, CA (WTS2024 Proceedings) .
January 08, 2024: Joined University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a postdoctoral research associate in the department of Radiology (under School of Medicine)
November 17, 2023: Successfully completed final dissertation defense for PhD in Electrical Engineering (Dissertation).
November 06, 2023: Conference paper titled "Hand Gesture Recognition through Reflected Infrared Light Wave Signals" presented at ICEEE2023 has been published. (IEEEXplore link, pdf)
October 28, 2023: Journal paper titled "Real-Time Traffic End-of-Queue Detection and Tracking in UAV Video" has been published in "International Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems Research". (Official link, pdf)
September 28, 2023: Virtual technical talk at Computational medical imaging and therapy (CMIT) lab at Washington University at St. Louis. Presentation title: "Advancing Healthcare with Incoherent Light-wave Sensing for Non-Contact Vitals Monitoring".
June 12, 2023: Completed PhD dissertation proposal defense. Dissertation proposal title: "Wireless non-contact incoherent light-wave sensing: Applications, prospects and challenges".
May 10, 2023: Attended 10th ICEEE 2023 conference at Istanbul, Turkey virtually and received excellent presentation award for presenting the paper titled "Hand Gesture Recognition through Reflected Infrared Light Wave Signals". (Award link)
Oct 29, 2021: First authored journal paper titled "TV White Space Based Wireless Broadband Internet Connectivity: A Case Study With Implementation Details and Performance Analysis" has been published in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. (IEEEXplore link)
Jan 01, 2021: First journal paper titled "Gesture Recognition Using Reflected Visible and Infrared Lightwave Signals" has been published in IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems. (IEEEXplore link, pdf)
Since my early youth, I was passionate in mathematics and computer programming and loved to attend related competitions to evaluate and sharpen my skills on these. C was the first programming language that I learnt right after completing my secondary education in Rajshahi, Bangladesh. I developed a simple tic-tac-toe game using Turbo C compiler in 2004.
At that time, I learned that nationwide mathematical Olympiad was going to be held in Bangladesh and registered as a participant in that. I continued participating in various regional and national math and programming Olympiads. I got selected for National Math Camp in Dhaka, Bangladesh twice as a recognition of my performance in math Olympiads. These camps took place in order to select members of Bangladesh Math team for participating in International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) held annually.
In 2007, Bangladesh participated in Asian-Pacific Mathematical Olympiad (APMO) for the first time. I participated in this prestigious math Olympiad on that year and won bronze medal. Since Bangladesh was an associate nation, the solution scripts were evaluated locally in that year. As a new country in world-wide math Olympiad journey, it was one of the stepping-stones for Bangladesh. By the way, Bangladesh started participating in IMO since 2005 and they are doing really great in recent years in it.
I developed my programming skills on C and C++ over time which made me one of the top 5 performers among 180 students in Computer Programming course (both theory and lab) in the very first semester of my undergraduate study. As an electrical engineer, I naturally became adept in MATLAB by doing various assignments on numerical analysis, signal processing and physics using it. Also, through some self-projects, I have learned programming and building circuits with micro-controller.
After graduation from BUET, I have worked for 7 years in Bangladesh in three different companies, in software and telecommunications sectors. I have grown expertise on Java and android development during my tenure in Bangladesh subsidiary of Samsung Electronics (2012-2015), known as Samsung R&D Institute Bangladesh (SRBD). I obtained 'Advanced' rank in computer programming (software certificate test) in SRBD as a recognition of my programming skill in solving problems. Later, I switched to telecommunications sector and worked in two companies (SSD-Tech for 1 year and BTCL for 3 years). The skill-set that I developed by working in these companies were MySQL, IP networking, routing, switching, fiber-optic transmission and project management.
When I started looking for opportunities of graduate study in United States of America, my prior industry experience helped me a lot in getting one. I joined Oklahoma State University as a PhD student in Electrical Engineering as well as teaching assistant in Spring 2020 and expecting my graduation in December 2023. I started exploring the realm of machine learning and deep learning using Python language and its APIs like Scikit-learn and Tensorflow in this tenure, as a requirement of both research and course projects. I am also adept in Image processing in MATLAB and completed 6 projects on it (details are available in my Github profile).
Figure 2: In front of OSU library