Guest professor Faisal Qureshi visited STC
Prof. Faisal Qureshi from the Ontario Tech University is a computer vision researcher. In March 2022 he visited Mid Sweden University for the first time since the pandemic started. We met to talk about his research, how the cooperation with STC started, and what are the goals for the collaboration.
How did your cooperation with Mid Sweden University started?
I first met Hiba Alqaysi and Irida Shallari at ICDSC 2018 conference at Eindhoven. I listened to Hiba’s talk on dome camera placement for bird detection and tracking around windfarms. I had also done some work on 3D tracking and I was very interested in Hiba’s work. We started talking and realized that we were both interested in similar problems. Hiba later introduced me to her doctoral advisor, Prof. Mattias O’Nils. Together with Prof. O’Nils’ team from STC (Najeem Laval and Hiba Alqaysi) and I put together a successful STINT application. This grant setup our initial collaboration and allowed me to visit Mid Sweden university for the first time in December 2019.
You have been a guest professor during the pandemic, what have you done during this time?
I started as a guest professor in November 2020. I haven’t been able to visit Mid Sweden university since now due to pandemic related travel restrictions. Still we managed to use online tools to connect and make progress towards our common research goals. We have published two papers, plus we have released two image datasets for the research community. The first dataset is useful for those interested in bird detection and counting around windfarms, and the second datasets is useful for those develop visual persception systems for autonomous personal mobility devices. The second dataset was collected using a Permobil wheelchair. Our hope is that the research community will find these datasets useful.
Prof. Faisal Qureshi holds a guest lecture on Hyperspectral Image Analysis: Lessons Learned during his visit.
What is your goal with this cooperation?
This cooperation has been very beneficial for me. It gives me an opportunity to work with smart people on problems with strong theoretical and practical aspects. Such problems provide fertile ground for new discoveries, knowledge generation, and student training.
Research is a team-sports, and this cooperation has allowed me to connect with many excellent colleagues at STC and more broadly at Mid Sweden University. It has been a thrilling ride.
What is left to do before the guest program ends?
We are currently working on a project aims to use a network of off-the-shelf cameras for 3D positioning of shipping containers. An outcome of this project will be enabling technologies for shipping dock automation, resulting in cost savings and hopefully minimizing the environmental impact of shipping dock operations. The project will also lead to research publications and possibly patents.
I hope that this collaboration will continue. It is nice to work with this excellent team of researchers that Prof. O’Nils has gathered at STC. What I like about this team is that they’ve got their feet on the ground and heads in the clouds.
More information
More information about Prof. Faisal Qureshi
A temporal boosted yolo-based model for birds detection around wind farms
Evaluation of 2D-/3D-Feet-Detection Methods for Semi-Autonomous Powered Wheelchair Navigation