FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES
Ferda Ofli
- Phone44 451 227
- Office locationRC-B1-1182
Biography
Dr. Ferda Ofli is a senior scientist in Qatar Computing Research Institute's Social Computing group. Before joining QCRI, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Teleimmersion Lab working with Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA from 2010 to 2014. He received the BSc degrees both in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Computer Engineering, and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2005 and 2010, respectively. Dr. Ofli pursued his PhD work in the Multimedia, Vision and Graphics Laboratory (MVGL) at Koc University under the supervision of Prof. Engin Erzin, Prof. Yucel Yemez and Prof. Murat Tekalp. Dr. Ofli's research interests cover computer vision, machine learning, and multimedia signal processing. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM with over 50 publications in top-tier conferences and journals including PAMI, CVPR, WACV, TMM, JBHI, and JVCI. He won the ISCRAM Best Insight Paper and Best Paper Runner-up Awards in 2019, the ISCRAM Best Paper Runner-up Award in 2017, Elsevier JVCI Best Paper Award in 2015, and IEEE SIU Best Student Paper Award in 2011. He also received the Graduate Studies Excellence Award in 2010 for outstanding academic achievement at Koc University.
Research Interests
Dr. Ofli's research interests span computer vision, machine learning and multimedia signal processing. His current research focuses on using deep learning techniques on Internet image data, created and annotated by online communities, to improve object recognition and scene understanding. Specific areas of interest include (i) understanding health habits from profile pictures and food photos, and (ii) extracting actionable information from imagery content for crisis response and management.
- Computer Vision
- Machine Learning
- Multimedia Signal Processing
Experience
Senior Scientist
Social Computing Group, Qatar Computing Research Institute; Doha, Qatar.
2019 - PresentScientist
Social Computing Group, Qatar Computing Research Institute; Doha, Qatar.
2014 - PresentPostdoctoral Researcher
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences; University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
2010 - 2014
Research Assistant
College of Engineering; Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey.
2005 - 2010Teaching Assistant
College of Engineering; Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey.
2005 - 2010
Education
PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Koc University; Istanbul, Turkey
2010BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Koc University; Istanbul, Turkey
2005
BSc in Computer Engineering
Koc University; Istanbul, Turkey
2005
Selected Publications
Javier Marin, Aritro Biswas, Ferda Ofli, Nicholas Hynes, Amaia Salvador, Yusuf Aytar, Ingmar Weber, Antonio Torralba; Recipe1M+: A Dataset for Learning Cross-Modal Embeddings for Cooking Recipes and Food Images
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI)
2019Dim Papadopoulos, Youssef Tamaazousti, Ferda Ofli, Ingmar Weber, Antonio Torralba; How to Make a Pizza: Learning a Compositional Layer-based GAN Model
IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR); 2019.
2019Xukun Li, Doina Caragea, Cornelia Caragea, Muhammad Imran, Ferda Ofli; Identifying Disaster Damage Images Using a Domain Adaptation Approach
International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM); 2019.
2019Firoj Alam, Ferda Ofli, Muhammad Imran; CrisisMMD: Multimodal Twitter Datasets from Natural Disasters
International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2018.
2018Firoj Alam, Ferda Ofli, Muhammad Imran; Processing Social Media Images by Combining Human and Machine Computing during Crises
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI); 2018.
2018Nazia Attari, Ferda Ofli, Muhammad Awad, Ji Lucas, Sanjay Chawla; Nazr-CNN: Fine-Grained Classification of UAV Imagery for Damage Assessment
IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA); 2017.
2017Dat T. Nguyen, Ferda Ofli, Muhammad Imran, Prasenjit Mitra; Damage Assessment from Social Media Imagery Data During Disasters
International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM); 2017.
2017Amaia Salvador, Nicholas Hynes, Yusuf Aytar, Javier Marin, Ferda Ofli, Ingmar Weber, Antonio Torralba; Learning Cross-modal Embeddings for Cooking Recipes and Food Images
IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR); 2017.
2017Enes Kocabey, Mustafa Camurcu, Ferda Ofli, Yusuf Aytar, Javier Marin, Antonio Torralba, Ingmar Weber; Face-to-BMI: Using Computer Vision to Infer Body Mass Index on Social Media
International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM); 2017.
2017Ferda Ofli, Yusuf Aytar, Ingmar Weber, Raggi al Hammouri, Antonio Torralba
Is Saki #delicious? The Food Perception Gap on Instagram and Its Relation to Health; International World Wide Web Conference (WWW).
2017Ferda Ofli, Patrick Meier, Muhammad Imran, Carlos Castillo, Devis Tuia, Nicolas Rey, Julien Briant, Pauline Millet, Friedrich Reinhard, Matthew Parkan, Stephane Joost
Combining Human Computing and Machine Learning to Make Sense of Big (Aerial) Data for Disaster Response; Big Data Journal (Big Data); 2016.
2016