research

Research at the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) - Graduate Seminar - ECE

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KAUST

In this talk, I will give an overview of research done in the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) at KAUST. At IVUL, we work on topics that are important to the computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML) communities, with emphasis on three research themes: Theme 1 (Video Understanding): We aim to extract meaningful semantic information from large-scale video data by tackling research problems such as object tracking, activity detection, moment retrieval, and language grounding in video. Theme 2 (Visual Computing for Automated Navigation): We develop methodology to enable more accurate, reliable, and robust perception of the visual world for automated navigation applications (e.g. self-driving cars and UAVs). In this theme, we tackle research problems such as object tracking, segmentation, and detection in 3D data, as well as transfer learning from simulation (sim2real). Theme 3 (Fundamentals/Foundations): In this theme, we tackle fundamental research problems in CV and ML that transcend specific applications with focus on deep network theory/analysis (e.g. robustness, certification, and interpretability) and structured optimization methods for large-scale CV/ML problems. Throughout the talk, I will highlight some of the interesting projects at IVUL to encourage students to get interested in the research field.

Aerospace Systems Research at KAUST, an uplifting experience

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KAUST

Aerospace Engineering is the source of much dreaming and worrying in most people's imagination. As such, it constitutes a marvelous support for the development and application of numerous disciplines, chief among them are aerodynamics, structures, flight and orbital mechanics. With time however, information technologies are progressively becoming the costliest activity within the aerospace engineering systems design phase. Indeed, they stand as the core elements of avionics systems, airline operations, air traffic control, spacecraft engineering, and planetary exploration, among others. Such subjects have been bringing much joy and teaching many lessons to your speaker for the past 30 years and will keep doing so, hopefully, for the next three decades.

A shock to the system

1 min read ·
The global, multifarious challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has scientists tapping their wide-ranging fields of expertise to attack the problem on many fronts. Answering the call from KAUST President Tony Chan, and coordinated by the University's leadership team, KAUST researchers making up the Rapid Research Response Team (R3T) are turning this crisis into an opportunity to innovate.

Researchers use lasers to bring the Internet under the sea

1 min read ·
Communicating underwater has always been a hassle. Radio transmissions, the ubiquitous wireless standard above the waves, can't transmit very far before being entirely absorbed by the water. Acoustic transmissions (think sonar) are the preferred choice underwater, but they suffer from very low data rates. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all just have Wi-Fi underwater instead?