Waqas Sultani

Computer Vision Scientist, Intelligent Machines Lab, ITU

Intelligent Machines Lab

waqas.sultani [AT] itu.edu.pk

Bio

I am a US-trained Computer vision engineer (Ph.D.) with more than 12 years of extensive hands-on experience working on Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Specifically, I have been analyzing videos and images using supervised, weakly supervised, and unsupervised machine learning techniques. Along with academia, I have spent sufficient time in the industry. Recently, I spent one year in Hazenai working as a Principle Machine Learning Engineer. At Hazenai, I have mainly worked on designing and implementing improved multiple object tracking and robust traffic phase detection. I have experience working on projects from many different companies and organizations including the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), US Data Transport Solution (DTS), US National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Xerox (USA), Facebook Research (US), Google Research (US) Samsung (South Korea), and Hazen.ai (Saudi Arabia). As a research scientist, my recent research projects related to human action recognition, anomaly detection, small object detection, geolocalization, and medical imaging got published in the top venues including CVPR, ICRA, AAAI, WACV, CVIU, MICCAI, etc. I was awarded the Facebook-CV4GC research award in 2019 and a Google Research scholar in 2023 for projects related to medical imaging. I did my MS from Seoul National University (the 27th best university in the world at that time) and Ph.D. (under Mubarak Shah) from the Center for Research in Computer Vision (6th best Computer vision research group in the US), University of Central Florida, USA.

Grants / Awards
Google Logo Groogle Research Scholar Award, “Toward Low-Cost Blood Cancer Detection” PI: Waqas Sultani
Facebook Logo Facebook AI, Computer Vision for Global Challenges research award, “Low-cost deep learning solution to real-time detection of malaria” PI: Dr. Waqas Sultani, Co-PI: Dr. Mohsen Ali, Dr. Arif Mehmood
Facebook Logo Higher Education Commission, , “Startup-Research Grant”, PI: Dr. Waqas Sultani, Co-PI: Dr. Mohsen Ali
Facebook Logo Higher Education Commission, , “Crime Investigation and Protection Lab”, PI: Dr. Faisal Kamran, Co-PI: Dr. Waqas Sultani
Media Coverage
C42 Live Interview at C42
ITU_Media Introductory Video by ITU Media Team
ITU_Media Article published in NewScientist regarding our CVPR-2018 paper

Recent

  • I will serve as an Area Chair for CVPR 2024
  • I will give an invited talk at CVPR 2023 workshop: A Comprehensive Tour and Recent Advancements toward Real-world Visual Geo-Localization
  • I received a Google Research Scholar award
  • Research accepted in ICRA 2023
  • Research accepted in AAAI and WACV 2023
  • I will serve as an Area Chair for CVPR 2023
  • I will serve as an Area Chair for CVPR 2022
  • Research accepted in CVPR 2022
  • Research accepted in CVPR 2021
  • I will serve as an Area Chair for ACM Multimedia 2021
  • I will serve as a Program Chair for the Program Committee of the WACV'21 HADCV workshop
  • I will serve as a Program Chair for DL-HAU2020, ICPR2020, Milan, Italy.
  • I will serve as an Area Chair for ACM Multimedia 2020, Seattle
  • Paper accepted in MICCAI 2020
  • Two books chapter published in Computer Vision: A Reference Guide
  • Two papers accepted in ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (Impact Factor = 7.3)
  • I will serve as an Area Chair for ACM Multimedia 2020, Seattle
  • Media Coverage: Check out an article about our research at Newscientist

Publications

Most recent publications on Google Scholar.
‡ indicates equal contribution.

  • Selected
  • All
  • Transvisdrone: Spatio-temporal transformer for vision-based drone-to-drone detection in aerial videos

    Tushar Sangam, Ishan Rajendrakumar Dave, Waqas Sultani, Mubarak Shah

    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023

    [Paper] [Code]
  • Cross-view Geo-localization via Learning Disentangled Geometric Layout Correspondence

    Xiaohan Zhang, Xingyu Li, Waqas Sultani, Yi Zhou, Safwan Wshah

    The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2023

    [Paper] [Code]
  • Cross-View Image Sequence Geo-localization

    Xiaohan Zhang, Xingyu Li, Waqas Sultani, Yi Zhou, Safwan Wshah

    IEEE Winter Conference on Computer Vision (WACV), 2023

    [Paper] [Code]
  • Fine-Grained Road Quality Monitoring Using Deep Learning

    Ifrah Siddiqui, Suleman Mazhar, Naufil Hassan, Waqas Sultani

    IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITS), 2023

    [Paper]
  • Mapping Temporary Slums From Satellite Imagery Using a Semi-Supervised Approach

    M. Fasi Ur Rehman, Izza Aftab, Waqas Sultani , and Mohsen Ali

    IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 2022

    [Paper]
  • Towards Low-Cost and Efficient Malaria Detection

    Waqas Sultani, Wajahat Nawaz, Syed Javed, Muhammad Sohail Danish, Asma Saadia, Mohsen Ali

    IEEE Intl. Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2022

    [Paper] [Project Page] [Code] [Dataset]
  • Dogfight Detecting Drones from Drones Videos

    Muhammad Waseem Ashraf, Waqas Sultani, Mubarak Shah

    IEEE Intl. Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021

    [Paper] [Project Page] [Code]
  • Human Action Recognition in Drone Videos Using a Few Aerial Training Examples

    Waqas Sultani, Mubarak Shah

    Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU), 2021

    [Paper] [Project Page] [Dataset]
  • Single-Shot Retinal Image Enhancement Using Deep Image Priors

    Adnan Qayyum, Waqas Sultani, Fahad Shamshad, Junaid Qadir, and Rashid Tufail

    International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2020

    [Paper]
  • Transvisdrone: Spatio-temporal transformer for vision-based drone-to-drone detection in aerial videos

    Tushar Sangam, Ishan Rajendrakumar Dave, Waqas Sultani, Mubarak Shah

    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023

    [Paper] [Code]
  • Cross-view Geo-localization via Learning Disentangled Geometric Layout Correspondence

    Xiaohan Zhang, Xingyu Li, Waqas Sultani, Yi Zhou, Safwan Wshah

    The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2023

    [Paper] [Code]
  • Cross-View Image Sequence Geo-localization

    Xiaohan Zhang, Xingyu Li, Waqas Sultani, Yi Zhou, Safwan Wshah

    IEEE Winter Conference on Computer Vision (WACV), 2023

    [Paper] [Code]
  • Fine-Grained Road Quality Monitoring Using Deep Learning

    Ifrah Siddiqui, Suleman Mazhar, Naufil Hassan, Waqas Sultani

    IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITS), 2023

    [Paper]
  • Mapping Temporary Slums From Satellite Imagery Using a Semi-Supervised Approach

    M. Fasi Ur Rehman, Izza Aftab, Waqas Sultani , and Mohsen Ali

    IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 2022

    [Paper]
  • Towards Low-Cost and Efficient Malaria Detection

    Waqas Sultani, Wajahat Nawaz, Syed Javed, Muhammad Sohail Danish, Asma Saadia, Mohsen Ali

    IEEE Intl. Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2022

    [Paper] [Project Page] [Code] [Dataset]
  • Dogfight Detecting Drones from Drones Videos

    Muhammad Waseem Ashraf, Waqas Sultani, Mubarak Shah

    IEEE Intl. Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021

    [Paper] [Project Page] [Code]
  • Human Action Recognition in Drone Videos Using a Few Aerial Training Examples

    Waqas Sultani, Mubarak Shah

    Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU), 2021

    [Paper] [Project Page] [Dataset]
  • Single-Shot Retinal Image Enhancement Using Deep Image Priors

    Adnan Qayyum, Waqas Sultani, Fahad Shamshad, Junaid Qadir, and Rashid Tufail

    International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2020

    [Paper]

Students

  • Ph.D
  • MS
  • [2019-2023] Hira Yaseen (Co-Supervisor) Applications of Deep Subspace Clustering in Visual Recognition
  • [2018-2022] Adnan Qayyum (Co-Supervisor) Secure and Robust Machine Learning for Healthcare
  • [2019-2023] Hira Yaseen (Co-Supervisor) Applications of Deep Subspace Clustering in Visual Recognition
  • [2018-2022] Adnan Qayyum (Co-Supervisor) Secure and Robust Machine Learning for Healthcare
  • [2020] Nadeem Yousaf Estimation of BMI from Facial Images using Semantic Segmentation based Region-Aware Pooling [Paper]
  • [2020] Qazi Ammar Arshad A Dataset and Benchmark for Malaria Life-Cycle Classification in Thin Blood Smear Images [Paper]
  • [2021] Hira Ahmad Deep Learning based House Counting in Satellite Imagery [Paper]
  • [2019] Muhammad Usman Ali Destruction from sky: Weakly supervised approach for destruction detection in satellite imagery [Paper]
  • [2019] Fawad Arshad Photo Album Summerization [Paper]

Patents

  • Selected
  • System and Method for Seat Occupancy Detection from Ceiling Mounted Camera using Robust Adaptive Threshold Criteria

    Robert P. Loce, Waqas Sultani, Hao Wu, and Beilei Xu

    US Patent: US9378421 B2

    [Paper]
  • System and Method for Detecting Settle Down Time using Computer Vision Techniques

    Robert P. Loce, Waqas Sultani, Hao Wu, Beilei Xu, Thomas F. Wade, Mary Ann Sprague, Patricia Swenton-Wall, Megan Clar, Eric Harte

    US Patent: US9384396 B2

    [Paper]

Projects

  • Selected
  • All
Malaria Detection
Low-cost deep learning solution to real-time detection of malaria
UAV Visual Analysis
Action Recognition through Drones and Drone Detection
Anomaly Detection in Videos and Images
Weakly Supervised Anomaly Detection
Malaria Detection
Low-cost deep learning solution to real-time detection of malaria
UAV Visual Analysis
Action Recognition through Drones and Drone Detection
Anomaly Detection in Videos and Images
Weakly Supervised Anomaly Detection

Vitæ

Full Resume in PDF.

  • Google Research Scholar Award 2023
    Towards Low-Cost Cancer Detection
    Google Award Winner
  • CVPR 2022 - 2024
    Area Chair
  • Hazen.ai 2022 - 2023
    Principle Machine Learning Engineer
    Hazen.ai
  • ACM Multimedia 2021 - 2022
    Area Chair
  • Facebook CV4GC Award 2019
    Towards Low-Cost Malaria Detection
    Facebook Award Winner
  • Information Technology University 2018 - now
    Assistant Professor
    Intelligent Machines Lab
  • University of Central Florida, USA 2011-2017
    Ph.D. student
    Center for Research in Computer Vision
    Advisor: Dr. Mubarak Shah
  • Xerox 2014-Summer
    Computer Vision Research Intern
    Webster, New York
  • Seoul National University, South Korea 2008-2010
    MS student
    Perceptional and Intelligence lab
    Advisor: Dr. Jin Young Choi
  • Advanced Engineering Organization 2007-2008
    System Design Engineer
  • Univeristy of Engineering and Technology, Taxila 2003-2006
    BS student
    Major: Electronics
    Advisor: Dr. Muhammad Amin
  • ICB, G-6/3, Islamabad 2000 - 2002
    F.Sc. Student
    Fedral Board

Website Design

This website template is taken from [1].
You can find all the code you need to build your own website in this GitHub repo. Feel free to use it.
Waqas Sultani
waqas.sultani [AT] itu.edu.pk