Experience

September 2025 - present

Doha, QATAR

Principal Scientist
Qatar Computing Research Institute

I continue to contribute QCRI's mission by leading impactful research projects in the AI for Social Good space, fostering collaboration with humanitarian stakeholders, and mentoring junior researchers.

Stakeholder engagements include United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Food Programme (WFP), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS), Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC), among others.

December 2019 - August 2025

Doha, QATAR

Senior Scientist

Qatar Computing Research Institute

Worked on various humanitarian projects ranging from social media image analysis for damage assessment and disaster response to satellite imagery analysis for poverty mapping, internal displacement, and climate adaptation.

Stakeholder engagements included United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (UN ESCWA), Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC), European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), British Geological Survey (BGS), Education Above All (EAA), among others.

April 2014 - 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.

September 2010 - April 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.

September 2005 - August 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.

July 2007 - August 2007

Istanbul, TURKEY

Visiting Scholar
Bogaziçi 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.

July 2006 - August 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.

June 2006 - July 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.

June 2005 - July 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.

July 2004 - September 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.