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Computer Science & Software Engineering
The University of Western Australia (UWA)
PhD Computer Science 2006
MS Information Security 2003
BE Avionics 1993

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Link to Datasets page

I lead the Machine Intelligence Group at The University of Western Australia. My research is in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision and Machine Learning. I am Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council and Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks & Learning Systems (TNNLS). I am also an ACM Distinguished Speaker and served as President of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society (Jan 2022 to Dec 2023), Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2019 to 2023), and Associate Editor for the Pattern Recognition Journal (2019 to 2023). I serve(d) as General Co-Chair of DICTA 2024, ACCV 2018, and DICTA 2019. I am a Courtesy Faculty in the CRCV lab at the University of Central Florida, USA.

PhD Positions: International/Local: I have two PhD positions for international or local students. Send me your 2 page CV stating your grades and institutions attended (and any publications and research experience). $35,000/- per year living allowance.

Postdoc Position: I have an open Postdoc position in generative AI (3D computer vision domain). It will be advertised soon. Stay tuned.

Research Funding and Projects

(21) Ajmal Mian, “3D Diffusion Models for Generating and Understanding 3D Scenes”, Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, $501,000 [2024 – 2026]

(20) Ajmal Mian, Naveed Akhtar, Richard Hartley, “Defending Artificial Intelligence against deception attacks”, National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grant, $573,693. [2022 – 2025] Project Page

(19) David Coward, Oskar Karczewski, Ajmal Mian, Wienczyslaw Bykowski, Grzegorz Taberski, “Characterizing satellites using unresolved optical observations”, Australian Research Council Linkage Project, $303,161 [2022 – 2025]

(18) Ajmal Mian, “Robust and Explainable 3D Computer Vision”, Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, $1,126,000 ARC + $604,481 UWA [2022 – 2025]

(17) Mubarak Shah, Ajmal Mian, Naveed Akhtar, Yogesh Rawat, “DNA: Deceptive Neural-network Attack Signature Identification”, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), USA, US$1,000,000 [2020 – 2022].

(16) Mubarak Shah, Ajmal Mian, Nazanin Rahnavard, Naveed Akhtar, “UTraP: Universal Transferable Perturbations for Machine Vision Disruption”, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), USA, US$1,000,000 [2020 – 2021].

(15) P Watson, N Jones, S Draper, M Bransby, E Cripps, …., Ajmal Mian, ….”ARC Research Hub for Transforming Energy Infrastructure Through Digital Engineering”, Australian Research Council (ARC) $5,000,000 + $20,000,000 Industry funding [2020 – 2024].

(14) Dao-Yi Yu, William Morgan, David Mackey, Ajmal Mian, Stephen Cringle … “Equipment Grant: Topcon OCT System with OCTA and Anterior Segment Options” NHMRC, $50,000, 2020.

(13) Jacqueline Alderson & Ajmal Mian, “Wearable Tech and Machine Learning: Disrupting Sports Analytics”, Fremantle Football Club, $105,000 [2019 – 2021].

(12) Ajmal Mian, Defense against adversarial attacks on deep learning in computer vision, ARC Discovery Project DP190102443, $426000 ARC + $105,000 UWA [2019-2021]

(11) Y. Gao, +6, Ajmal Mian, +13, “ARC Research hub for driving farming productivity and disease prevention”, ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub, $5,000,000 ARC + $3,828,000 Industry [2018 – 2013]

(10) Ajmal Mian, “View and shape invariant modeling of human actions for smart surveillance”, ARC Discovery Project DP160101458, $293,000. [2016 – 2018]

(9) Peter Eastwood, Ajmal Mian, N. McArdle, D. Hillman, “Predicting Obstructive Sleep Apnoea using 3D craniofacial photography”, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia Project $425,000. [2016 – 2018]

(8) Ajmal Mian, Andreas Dengel (DFKI) and Faisal Shafait, “Hyperspectral imaging for handwriting analysis and segmentation”, DAAD German Australian cooperation grant AU$15,000 + EURO 15,000. [2014 – 2015]

(7) Ajmal Mian, F. Shafait, B. Ghanem, “Biomass estimation of fish in the wild”, Research Collaboration Grant with KAUST, 2014.

(6) I. Reid, +10, Ajmal Mian, “Computational infrastructure for developing deep machine learning models” ARC LIEF $250,000, 2014.

(5) Ajmal Mian, “Machine learning for fracture risk assessment using simple radiography”, ARC Linkage project [2014 – Relinquished]

(4) Ajmal Mian, “Active multispectral computer vision for defense and security” ARC Australian Research Fellowship $734,000 ARC + ~$100,000 UWA. [2011 – 2015]

(3) E. Harvey, M. Shortis, Ajmal Mian, P. Culverhouse, D. Edington, D. Cline, “Automation of species recognition and size measurement of fish from underwater stereo-video imagery” ARC Linkage $436,000 + Industry funds. [2011 – 2014]

(2) Robyn Owens and Ajmal Mian, “Person identification using multiple non-invasive iris and face biometrics in video”, ARC Discovery Project $390,000. [2010 – 2012]

(1) Ajmal Mian, “Integration of spatio-temporal video data for realtime smart proactive surveillance”, ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship $311,298 ARC + ~$50,000 UWA. [2008 – 2010]

Honours and Awards

  1. UWA Medical School Excellence in Research Supervision Impact Award 2023
  2. UWA Physics, Maths & Computing School Special Commendation for Research Mentorship 2023
  3. HBF Mid-Career Scientist of the Year 2022
  4. President of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society (Jan 2022 to Dec 2023)
  5. Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), 2022
  6. Australian Research Council Future Fellow 2022
  7. Distinguished Speaker of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2021
  8. SmartSat CRC/AI4Space best paper runner up award at DICTA 2021
  9. IEEE Senior Member 2020
  10. Faculty Teaching Award for Excellence in Research Supervision 2017
  11. Aspire Profesional Development Award 2016
  12. APRS Best Paper Runner up Award at DICTA 2016
  13. EH Thompson Award 2015 (link)
  14. Supervisor of runner-up PhD student in Canon Extreme Imaging Competition 2015
  15. The Vice-Chancellor’s Mid-Career Research Award 2014
  16. IAPR Best Scientific Paper Award at ICPR 2014
  17. West Australian Early Career Scientist of the Year 2012
  18. UWA Outstanding Young Investigator 2011
  19. ARC Australian Research Fellowship (ARF), 2011-2015
  20. Australian Academy of Science ARC Award 2009
  21. Postdoc Award for Best Work Accepted for Publication 2009
  22. ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (APD), 2008-2010
  23. Australasian Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award 2007 (CORE)
  24. Prize for Higher Degree by Research Achievements 2007
  25. Special Commendation for Higher Degree by Research Achievements 2006
  26. Postgraduate Research Travel Award, 2005

Invited/Keynote Speeches

  1. UNSW.ai Workshop – Imaging, Sensing and Data Informatics with AI, Oct 2022: Keynote talk on “3D City Mapping and Deep Learning from LiDAR Point Clouds”.
  2. ICML 2022 workshop on New Frontiers in Adversarial Machine Learning (AdvML): Keynote talk on “Adversarial attacks on deep learning in computer vision”.
  3. IROS Workshop on Multi-Agent Relational Reasoning (MAR2), Prague, Czech Republic, Oct 2021: Keynote talk on “Deep learning for 3D point clouds and meshes”.
  4. International Workshop on Optoelectronics Perception (IWOP2021), Xidian University, Xi’an, Oct 2021: Keynote talk on “Deep Learning over 3D Point Clouds”.
  5. 13th Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems, Thailand, Apr 2021: Keynote talk on “Threat of adversarial attacks on deep learning in computer vision” [slides]
  6. International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC), USA, Oct 2019: Keynote talk on “Dense 3D face correspondence for deep 3D face recognition and medical applications”.
  7. CVPR workshop on Gigavisioin, USA, Jun 2019: Keynote talk on “Precision Modeling of 3D Human Motion for Behavioural and Performance Analysis”. [pdf slides] [ppt slides]
  8. CVPR workshop on Analysis & Modelling of Faces & Gestures (AMFG), USA, Jul 2018: Keynote talk on “Dense 3D face correspondence for identification and medical applications”.
  9. Facial Recognition: Surpassing the touchstone of biometric ID, Singapore 2018: Invited talk on “Large scale 3D face recognition in the open world”.
  10. University of Central Florida, USA Dec 2017: Invited by Centre for Research in Computer Vision (CRCV). Title of talk “Deja Vecu: Leveraging legacy mocap data for robust human action recognition”.
  11. Int Workshop on Optoelectronic Perception, 111 Project Xidian Univ., China Oct 2017: Invited by Xidian Uni for the 111 project meeting. Title of talk “Machine learning for hyperspectral image and human action analysis”.
  12. Foundation Meeting of Aesthetics and Evidence, Brisbane 2017: Keynote talk “3D facial analysis using deformable models”.
  13. Matlab Conference, Perth 2017: Invited by Mathworks for keynote talk on “3D human action recognition”.
  14. Annual Inter-hospital Clinical Meeting on Medical & Surgical Innovations, 2016: Keynote talk on “Leave learning to the machines: Deep Learning”.
  15. UWA ScienceWeek 2015: Invited by the Institute of Advanced Studies for keynote talk (shared with Prof Eastwood, Director of UWA Sleep Centre) on “A good night’s sleep: Sleep disorders and the shape of your face”.
  16. Workshop on Faces of Western Australia 2015: Keynote talk on “3D face analysis through dense correspondence”.
  17. University of Science Malaysia, 2014: Invited by USM to give a three days workshop on “Using Matlab for 3D shape analysis & recognition”.
  18. Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV) 2014: Invited talk at the ACCV area chair meeting. Title of talk was “Semi-supervised spectral clustering for image set classification”.

Postdocs supervised

  1. Dr Jordan Vice (Apr 2023 – )
  2. Dr Nasir Ahmad (Feb 2023 – Dec 2023)
  3. Dr Nur Halder (Jan 2022 – Dec 2022)
  4. Dr Huan Lei (Aug 2021 – Dec 2021)
  5. Dr Anwarul Patwari (Jun 2021 – Dec 2021)
  6. Dr Mohammad AAK Jalwana (Mar 2021 – Jan 2022)
  7. Dr Naveed Akthar    (Jun 2017 – Jun 2019)
  8. Dr Syed Zulqarnain Gilani   (May 2016 – Nov 2018)
  9. Dr Faisal Shafait        (Jan 2013 – May 2015)
  10. Dr Arif Mahmood      (Jan 2012 – Jan 2015)
  11. Dr Yiqun Hu             (2010 – 2011)
  12. Dr Amar El-Sallam (2008 – 2008)

PhD Students (completed)

  1. Sania Zahan* (thesis in review Mar 2024)
    Thesis: 3D Human motion analysis
  2. Dr Muhammad Ibrahim* (2023): Data analyst in DPIRD Govt of Western Australia
    Thesis: 3D scene understanding from LiDAR point clouds
  3. Dr Zainy Aljawy Malakan* (2023)
    Thesis: Automatic generation of a coherent story from a set of images
  4. Dr Janis Marc Nolde (2023) 
    Thesis: The use of AI to improve cardiovascular risk stratification
  5. Dr Zachery Born (2023)
    Thesis: Predicting game play in team sports with deep learning
  6. Dr Camilo Andres Pestana Cardeno* (2022) 
    Thesis: Leveraging computer vision through non-traditional adversarial machine learning
  7. Dr Nayyer Aafaq* (2022)
    Thesis: Deep learning for Natural Language Description of Videos
  8. Dr Nooshin Shahbazi (2021)
    Thesis: Weed detection with LiDAR
  9. Dr Huan Lei* (2021): Postdoc at Australian National University
    Thesis: Geometric Deep Learning for 3D Data
  10. Dr Mohammad Asim Jalwana* (2021)
    Thesis: Leveraging internal gradients to understand deep visual models
  11. Dr Nur Haldar (2021)
    Thesis: Personalized location selection in large-scale geo-social network
  12. Dr Taotao Cai (2020): Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University
    Thesis: Network community analysis for influence maximization
  13. Dr Shijie Sun (2019): Lecturer in Chang’an University, Xi’an, China
    Thesis: Research On Multiple Object Detection and Tracking Problems in Complex Traffic Scenes
  14. Dr Mingtao Feng (2019): Lecturer in Xidian University, Xi’an, China
    Thesis: Deep learning based 3D perception and recognition for robot vision
  15. Dr Jian Liu* (2019):  JD Digits Silicon Valley AI Lab  (USA)     
    Thesis: Data-driven robust human action recognition           
  16. Dr William Johnson (2019):  Director of Applied Research at Vicon motion systems, UK
    Thesis: Non-invasive estimation of field-based ground reaction forces through deep learning
  17. Dr Xiang Yan (2018): Postdoc in Xidian University, Xi’an, China   
    Thesis: Action detection in videos
  18. Dr Hasan Zaki* (2017):  Asst/Prof International Islamic University Malaysia   
    Thesis: Object, scene and ego-centric action classification for robotic vision
  19. Dr Hossein Rahmani* (2016):  Asst/Prof Lancaster University, (UK)    
    Thesis: 3D Human action recognition
  20. Dr Naveed Akhtar* (2016):  Lecturer at The University of Western Australia        
    Thesis: Sparse representation for hyperspectral image analysis
  21. Dr Syed Zulqarnain Gilani* (2016):  Research Fellow, Edith Cowan University, Australia
    Thesis: 3D facial morphometrics for syndrome delineation
  22. Dr Ke Fan (2016):  Associate Investigator at Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health          
    Thesis: A framework for face recognition with set of testing images
  23. Dr Mingliang Xue (2015):                        
    Thesis: Discriminant feature extraction and selection for person-independent facial expression recognition
  24. Dr Muhammad Uzair* (2015):  Research Associate at The University of South Australia                   
    Thesis: Modeling conventional and hyperspectral image-sets for classification
  25. Dr Zohaib Khan* (2014):  Research Associate at The University of South Australia    
    Thesis: Hyperspectral imaging and analysis for sparse reconstruction and recognition
  26. Dr Yuk Lun Billy Li (2013):  Full Stack .Net Architect       
    Thesis: Robust face recognition based on color and depth information
  27. Dr Faisal R. Al-Osaimi (2010):  Assoc/Prof at Umm Al-Qura University, KSA         
    Thesis: Low-level fusion and deformation modeling for textured 3D face biometrics

Current PhD Students (* principal supervision)

  1. Brent P Allan (since Feb 2019) thesis: Orthodontic surgery planning and analysis
  2. Dylan Wood (since Aug 2020) thesis: Tennis serve analysis
  3. Bo Miao* (since Jan 2021) thesis: Video object segmentation
  4. Peiyu Yang* (since Feb 2021) thesis: Explainable Artificial Intelligence
  5. Jiantong Jiang* (since Apr 2021) thesis: Automatic Machine Learning
  6. Cris Da Costa Cunha (since Apr 2021) thesis: Causal Reinforcement Learning
  7. Yunzhuo Chen* (since Sep 2021) thesis: Deep fake detection
  8. Yong He (visiting from Hunan University) thesis: 3D point cloud analysis for semantic segmentation
  9. Zijie Wu (visiting from Hunan University) thesis: 3D point cloud analysis for object detection
  10. Larry Huynh* (since Mar 2023) thesis: Quantum Inspired Machine Learning
  11. Ashlesha Gill (since Feb 2023) thesis: Evaluation of lung cancer radiotherapy techniques
  12. Li Liang* (since Mar 2023) thesis: Semantic 3D scene completion
  13. Zichen Geng* (Apr 2023) thesis: 3D Human motion generation
  14. Weijia Liu (vising from Southeast University, China. Apr 2023) thesis: Text based video grounding
  15. Xiaoge Zhang* (May 2023) thesis: 3D point cloud compression
  16. Jian Liu (visiting from Hunan University – Sep 2023): 6DoF object pose estimation
  17. Pasa Ciceklidag* (since Oct 2023): 3D point cloud based change detection
  18. Jiaming Zhou (visiting student – Oct 2023): 6DoF object pose estimation
  19. Wenjun Zhang (visiting from NE Forestry University, Harbin – Oct 2023): Segmentation of 3D trees in LiDAR data
  20. Shahin Hakemi* (since Feb 2024): Making deep learning interpretable
  21. Khanh Nguyen* (since Feb 2024): 3D point cloud analysis
  22. Max Collins* (since Feb 2024): Securing AI models against deception attacks

Journal Editorials

  1. Senior Editor, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS) (2022-2024)
  2. Associate Editor, Pattern Recognition journal (2019 – 2023)
  3. Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2019 – 2023)
  4. Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS) (2019-2022)
  5. Guest Editor (lead), Remote Sensing special issue on Deep learning for remote sensing data (2022)
  6. Guest Editor (lead), Neural Computing And Applications, special issue on best of DICTA 2019 papers (2021)
  7. Guest Editor, Machine Vision & Applications (MVA) special issue on Advanced Machine Vision (2020)
  8. Guest Editor, Pattern Recognition (PR) special issue on Distance Metric Learning for Pattern Recognition (2018)
  9. Guest Editor, Image & Vision Computing (IVC) special issue on Regularization Techniques for High Dimensional Data Analysis (2017)
  10. Guest Editor, Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU) special issue on Language in Vision (2016)
  11. Associate Editor, IET Computer Vision (2017 – 2018)

Conference Organization

  1. General Chair, DICTA 2024
  2. Area Chair, ECCV 2024
  3. Doctoral Consortium Chair, ACM Multimedia 2024
  4. Doctoral Consortium Chair, FG 2023
  5. Area Chair, ECCV 2022
  6. Area Chair, IEEE CVPR 2022
  7. Area Chair, ACM Multimedia 2020 (12-16 Oct), Seattle, USA
  8. General Chair, DICTA 2019 (2-4 Dec), Perth, Australia
  9. Area Chair, WACV 2019, Hawaii, USA
  10. General Co-chair and Local Arrangements Chair ACCV 2018, Perth, Australia
  11. Area Chair, WACV 2018, Lake Tahoe, USA
  12. Area Chair, ICPR 2016, Cancun, Mexico.
  13. Area Chair, ACCV 2014, Singapore.
  14. Program Co-Chair, DICTA 2012, Fremantle, Australia

Workshop Organization

Organizing committee member for Computer Vision for Civil & Infrastructure Engineering Workshop (CVCIE @ ECCV2022), Deep Learning for Generic Underwater Video Tracking Workshop @ACCV2022, Applications of Machine Vision Workshop @ICMLA2019, Applications of Machine Vision Workshop @ACCV2018, and Deep-Vision Temporal Deep Learning Workshop @CVPR2017.