Ferda Ofli, PhD
Senior Scientist
EXPERIENCE
Dec 2019 - Present
Doha, QATAR
Senior Scientist
Qatar Computing Research Institute
April 2004 - November 2019
Doha, Qatar
Scientist
Qatar Computing Research Institute
One thread of his research activities at QCRI seeks to bring new perspectives from computer vision and machine learning into crisis computing and disaster response. Another thread explores new research grounds for developing innovative solutions in the medical and healthcare domain by combining wearable and mobile technology with social media monitoring and data mining techniques.
Sep 2010 - Apr 2014
Berkeley, CA
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of California, Berkeley
With Professor Ruzena Bajcsy, I worked on human activity understanding from multi-sensory data:
- Collected a multimodal human action database (released as ``Berkeley MHAD") consisting of temporally synchronized and geometrically calibrated data from an optical motion capture system, multi-view multi-baseline camera arrays, depths sensors, accelerometers and microphones.
Sep 2005 - Aug 2010
Istanbul, TURKEY
PhD Student
Koç University
With Professors A. Murat Tekalp, Yucel Yemez and Engin Erzin, I worked on various multimedia signal processing tasks:
- Developed a framework for learning many-to-many statistical mappings from musical primitives (i.e., musical measures) to dance motion primitives (i.e., dance figures) towards generating plausible alternative music-driven dance choreographies via hidden Markov models (HMM).
- Worked on audiovisual facial expression analysis using facial animation parameters (FAP) with active appearance models (AAM) for speech-driven facial expression synthesis and animation.
Jul 2007 - Aug 2007
Istanbul, TURKEY
Visiting Scholar
Bogazici University
eNTERFACE'07: The SIMILAR NoE Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces.
- Project leader and researcher in the "Audio-Driven Human Body Motion Analysis" project.
- Worked on body motion capture and audio-driven human body motion synthesis and animation tasks.
- Projects results were presented in ICASSP'08 and JMUI'08.
Jul 2006 - Aug 2006
Dubrovnik, Crotia
Visiting Scholar
University of Zagreb
eNTERFACE'06: The SIMILAR NoE Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces.
- Researcher in the "Multimodal Character Morphing" project
- Worked on face detection, tracking and extraction of facial key points for analysis and animation of facial mimics on a talking avatar.
Jun 2006 - Jul 2006
Barcelona Area, Spain
Visiting Scholar
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
The SIMILAR NoE Graduate Twinning Program.
- Visiting researcher in the Image Processing Group.
- Worked on multicamera calibration, data acquisition and body motion analysis under supervision of Professors Ferran Marques and Josep Ramon Casas.
- Also investigated deinterlacing algorithms on the acquired data to improve the video quality for the body motion analysis task.
Jun 2005 - Jul 2005
Mons, Belgium
Visiting Scholar
Faculté Polytechnique de Mons
eNTERFACE'05: The SIMILAR NoE Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces.
- Researcher in the "Combined Gesture-Speech Analysis" project.
- Developed a graphical tool for upper body animation.
- Project results were presented in ICME'06.
Jul 2004 - Sep 2004
Istanbul, Turkey
Intern
STMicroelectronics
- Developed team projects on analog and digital design of microelectronic circuits, i.e., analog design of an inverter and digital design of an alarm clock.
- Wrote 160-page long report on this internship.