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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), ACM Distinguished Speaker, Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council and former President of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society. I served as a Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks & Learning Systems (TNNLS) and Associate Editor of IEEE Trans on Image Processing (TIP) and Pattern Recognition. I serve(d) as General Co-Chair of DICTA 2024, ACCV 2018, and DICTA 2019. I am also a Courtesy Faculty in the CRCV lab at the University of Central Florida, USA.

PhD Positions: International/Local: I have one PhD position for international or local student. Send me your 2 page CV stating your grades and institutions attended (and any publications and research experience). $35,000/- per year living allowance. Besides this, you can also apply in the interntional RTP scholarship round (deadline around 31 Aug) and local RTP scholarship round (deadline around 31 Oct) every year.

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. Vice-President of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society (Jan 2000 to Dec 2021)
6. Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), 2022
7. Australian Research Council Future Fellow 2022
8. Distinguished Speaker of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2021
9. SmartSat CRC/AI4Space best paper runner up award at DICTA 2021
10. IEEE Senior Member 2020
11. Faculty Teaching Award for Excellence in Research Supervision 2017
12. Aspire Profesional Development Award 2016
13. APRS Best Paper Runner up Award at DICTA 2016
14. EH Thompson Award 2015 (link)
15. Supervisor of runner-up PhD student in Canon Extreme Imaging Competition 2015
16. The Vice-Chancellor’s Mid-Career Research Award 2014
17. IAPR Best Scientific Paper Award at ICPR 2014
18. West Australian Early Career Scientist of the Year 2012
19. UWA Outstanding Young Investigator 2011
20. ARC Australian Research Fellowship (ARF), 2011-2015
21. Australian Academy of Science ARC Award 2009
22. Postdoc Award for Best Work Accepted for Publication 2009
23. ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (APD), 2008-2010
24. Australasian Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award 2007 (CORE)
25. Prize for Higher Degree by Research Achievements 2007
26. Special Commendation for Higher Degree by Research Achievements 2006
27. 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 Dasith De Silva (Aug 2024 – )
2. Dr Jordan Vice (Apr 2023 – )
3. Dr Nasir Ahmad (Feb 2023 – Dec 2023)
4. Dr Nur Halder (Jan 2022 – Dec 2022)
5. Dr Huan Lei (Aug 2021 – Dec 2021)
6. Dr Anwarul Patwari (Jun 2021 – Dec 2021)
7. Dr Mohammad AAK Jalwana (Mar 2021 – Jan 2022)
8. Dr Naveed Akthar    (Jun 2017 – Jun 2019)
9. Dr Syed Zulqarnain Gilani   (May 2016 – Nov 2018)
10. Dr Faisal Shafait        (Jan 2013 – May 2015)
11. Dr Arif Mahmood      (Jan 2012 – Jan 2015)
12. Dr Yiqun Hu             (2010 – 2011)
13. Dr Amar El-Sallam (2008 – 2008)

PhD Students (completed)

1. Dylan Wood (thesis in review Sep 2024)
   Thesis: Mechanical examination of the tennis serve using expert qualitative analysis & machine learning
2. Dr Zijie Wu (2024)
   Thesis: Robotic 3D Measurement
3. Dr Peiyu Yang* (2024)
   Thesis: Explaining Deep Neural Networks to Establish Trust
4. Dr Jiantong Jiang* (2024)
   Thesis: Efficient Automatic Probabilistic Graphical Model Learning and Inference
5. Dr Sania Zahan* (2024)
   Thesis: 3D Human motion analysis
6. Dr Muhammad Ibrahim* (2023): Data analyst in DPIRD Govt of Western Australia
   Thesis: 3D scene understanding from LiDAR point clouds
7. Dr Zainy Aljawy Malakan* (2023)
   Thesis: Automatic generation of a coherent story from a set of images
8. Dr Janis Marc Nolde (2023) 
   Thesis: The use of AI to improve cardiovascular risk stratification
9. Dr Zachery Born (2023)
   Thesis: Predicting game play in team sports with deep learning
10. Dr Camilo Andres Pestana Cardeno* (2022) 
    Thesis: Leveraging computer vision through non-traditional adversarial machine learning
11. Dr Nayyer Aafaq* (2022)
    Thesis: Deep learning for Natural Language Description of Videos
12. Dr Nooshin Shahbazi (2021)
    Thesis: Weed detection with LiDAR
13. Dr Huan Lei* (2021): Australian Institute of Machine Learning
    Thesis: Geometric Deep Learning for 3D Data
14. Dr Mohammad Asim Jalwana* (2021)
    Thesis: Leveraging internal gradients to understand deep visual models
15. Dr Nur Haldar (2021)
    Thesis: Personalized location selection in large-scale geo-social network
16. Dr Taotao Cai (2020): Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University
    Thesis: Network community analysis for influence maximization
17. 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
18. Dr Mingtao Feng (2019): Lecturer in Xidian University, Xi’an, China
    Thesis: Deep learning based 3D perception and recognition for robot vision
19. Dr Jian Liu* (2019):  JD Digits Silicon Valley AI Lab  (USA)     
    Thesis: Data-driven robust human action recognition           
20. 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
21. Dr Xiang Yan (2018): Postdoc in Xidian University, Xi’an, China   
    Thesis: Action detection in videos
22. Dr Hasan Zaki* (2017):  Asst/Prof International Islamic University Malaysia   
    Thesis: Object, scene and ego-centric action classification for robotic vision
23. Dr Hossein Rahmani* (2016):  Asst/Prof Lancaster University, (UK)    
    Thesis: 3D Human action recognition
24. Dr Naveed Akhtar* (2016):  Lecturer at The University of Western Australia        
    Thesis: Sparse representation for hyperspectral image analysis
25. Dr Syed Zulqarnain Gilani* (2016):  Research Fellow, Edith Cowan University, Australia
    Thesis: 3D facial morphometrics for syndrome delineation
26. Dr Ke Fan (2016):  Associate Investigator at Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health          
    Thesis: A framework for face recognition with set of testing images
27. Dr Mingliang Xue (2015):                        
    Thesis: Discriminant feature extraction and selection for person-independent facial expression recognition
28. Dr Muhammad Uzair* (2015):  Research Associate at The University of South Australia                   
    Thesis: Modeling conventional and hyperspectral image-sets for classification
29. Dr Zohaib Khan* (2014):  Research Associate at The University of South Australia    
    Thesis: Hyperspectral imaging and analysis for sparse reconstruction and recognition
30. Dr Yuk Lun Billy Li (2013):  Full Stack .Net Architect       
    Thesis: Robust face recognition based on color and depth information
31. 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. Bo Miao* (since Jan 2021) thesis: Video object segmentation
3. Cris Da Costa Cunha (since Apr 2021) thesis: Causal Reinforcement Learning
4. Yunzhuo Chen* (since Sep 2021) thesis: Deep fake detection
5. Yong He (visiting from Hunan University) thesis: 3D point cloud analysis for semantic segmentation
6. Larry Huynh (since Mar 2023) thesis: Quantum Inspired Machine Learning
7. Ashlesha Gill (since Feb 2023) thesis: Evaluation of lung cancer radiotherapy techniques
8. Li Liang* (since Mar 2023) thesis: Semantic 3D scene completion
9. Zichen Geng* (Apr 2023) thesis: 3D Human motion generation
10. Weijia Liu (vising from Southeast University, China. Apr 2023) thesis: Text based video grounding
11. Xiaoge Zhang* (May 2023) thesis: 3D point cloud compression
12. Jian Liu (visiting from Hunan University – Sep 2023): 6DoF object pose estimation
13. Hao Wei (Xian Jiaotong University – Sep 2023): Image compression
14. Pasa Ciceklidag* (since Oct 2023): 3D point cloud based change detection
15. Jiaming Zhou (visiting student – Oct 2023): 6DoF object pose estimation
16. Shahin Hakemi* (since Feb 2024): Making deep learning interpretable
17. Khanh Nguyen* (since Feb 2024): 3D point cloud analysis
18. Max Collins* (since Feb 2024): Securing AI models against deception attacks
19. Dorota Mieczkowska (since Feb 2024): Characterizing satellites using unresolved optical observations (TBC)
20. Danish Ali (since Mar 2024): Brain tumour segmentation
21. Hasib Khan (since Mar 2024): Social media analysis
22. Han Trinh (since Jul 2024): Inherited retinal disease analysis with machine learning

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.