Undergraduate Research Symposium (DURS2023)

Dr. Asim Imdad is a tech entrepreneur and academician with a Ph.D. in AI and 15+ years of industry and academia experience across three continents. He solved supply chain management problems and cancer detection at NIST, USA, and developed the first tax evasion detection system at SRB. Dr. Imdad focuses on health informatics, algorithmic trading, video analytics, and fintech at AKS iQ using AI and machine learning. He has authored over 40 tech publications and is an expert in machine learning, computer vision, and quantum computing.

Dr. Muhammad Atif Tahir received his PhD from School of Computer Science & Engineering at Queen’s University, Belfast, UK, MSc in Computer Engineering from King Fahd University, Dhahran, KSA, and BE in Computer Systems Engineering from NED University of Engg, and Tech., Karachi, Pakistan. He is currently working as Professor and Director at School of Computer Science, FAST-NUCES, Karachi Campus. Before joining FAST, he was working as Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. His main research is in Machine Learning & Combinatorial Optimization Techniques with applications in image / video retrieval, cancer classification, surface inspection, bioinformatics, multi-label classification, and face recognition. He has authored and co-authored more than 60 publications in top quality journals including IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Pattern Recognition, Journal of Machine Learning Research, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. He is also Director of Video Surveillance Lab, NCBC funded by Planning Commission of Pakistan and HEC. Dr Tahir has recently won several research grants worth Rs 50 millions.

Jawwad A Shamsi (jawwad.shamsi@nu.edu.pk) is a Professor of Computer Science and Dean of Computing in National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Karachi, Pakistan. He received PhD. in computer science from Wayne State University, MI, USA in 2009.

His research interest lies in Deep Learning , Machine Learning, High Performance Computing, Cloud Computing, Software Defined Networking, and Network Security.

His work has been funded by Higher Education Commission, IGNITE, Pakistan, and NVIDIA, USA. He has also received IEEE TCPP early adopter awards. In addition, he authored a Book titled "Big Data Systems: A 360 Degree Approach", which has been published by Taylor and Francis. He has 22 impact factor journal publications. His publications have received more than 1300 citations. He has also served as the Director Karachi campus and Head of the CS department at NUCES. Contact him at jawwad.shamsi@nu.edu.pk.

Dr. Tahir Syed received his Ph.D in Learning and Vision from Université Paris-Saclay, France. He lectures at the Institute of Business Administration Karachi. He has worked extensively with fundamental Machine Learning problems such as class imbalance and distribution shift, and specialises in designing new losses for optimising neural networks for specific needs. He drafted and designed Pakistan's first graduate Data Science curriculum.

At the level of undergraduate research, he has had the distinction of having built up solid young research workers, and his undergraduate trainees have published in tier-A* conferences and workshops, and have been accepted at graduate programmes in highly-ranked CS schools.

Dr. Tariq Mahmood, Professor and Coordinator of MS Programs, holds a Ph.D. Degree in Computer Science from the University of Trento, Italy – 2004. His career spans 13 years of experience in higher education research, teaching, and management. He has published over 60 research publications and has a citation score of ~1330 in Google Scholar. He has more than 8 years of experience in conducting training and consultancies in data analytics and related domains. He heads the Big Data Analytics laboratory at IBA with a focus on creating and maintaining academic-industry collaborations including on-going projects with Tabba Heart Institute, AKUH, and 10pearls.

Dr. Tariq Rahim Soomro, Professor of Computer Science, and Acting Rector at Institute of Business Management, has received BSc (Hons) and M.Sc degrees in Computer Science from University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan and his PhD in Computer Applications from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China and became the first Pakistani to receive all three degrees in the field of Computer Science. He has more than 28 years of extensive and diverse experience as an administrator, computer programmer, researcher, and teacher. As an administrator, He served as Coordinator, Head of Department, Head of Faculty, Dean of Faculty, Head of Academic Affairs and having wide experience in accreditation related matters, including ABET USA, HEC Pakistan and Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE). He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers. He has been a senior member of IEEE since 2005 and IEEE Member since 2000. He is currently serving as Vice-Chair IEEE Karachi Section and IEEE Computer Society R10 Southern Area Coordinator of Computer Society. He is member Task Force on Arabic Script IDNs by Middle East Strategy Working Group (MESWG) of ICANN, Member Editorial Board of several research Journals and also served as Technical Program Committee Member of several national and international conferences. He also received the ISOC Fellowship to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for the 68th Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting. He is also IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor (2021-2023) and recently became the first Pakistani to be selected by the IEEE Computer Society to the ‘Inaugural Class of IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributors’.