Our Team
Meet the dedicated researchers and students of BASE Lab
Lab Director
Dr. Khaled Ahmed
Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director
Khaled Ahmed is currently an associate professor and graduate program director in the School of Computing at Southern Illinois University. He was previously an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, College of Computer and Information Technology at King Faisal University. Moreover, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He has over 19 years of experience in academia, research, and industry.
Dr. Ahmed has a prolific publication record, including 69 articles in journals and conference proceedings, and he has edited four books on Peer-to-Peer networks, Wireless Sensor Networks, and advances in Big Data, Blockchain, and Deep Learning. He has acted as Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-PI in about 11 funded research projects. Currently, he is PI and Co-PI on three federal/state research funds.
His current research focuses on the areas of Computer Vision, Deep Learning, Big Data, and real-time video analysis for safety applications.
PhD Students
Akhila Kambhatla
Toqi Tahamid Sarker
Taminul Islam
Laya Karimi Chahrogh
Joseph Kalinzi
Joseph is designing AI avatars with context-aware dialogue generation, natural voice interactions, emotion and facial expression recognition and synthesis, and adaptive behavior through reinforcement learning.
Research Interests:
- Large Language Models
- Computer Vision
- Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback
- Human-Computer Interaction
Master's Students
Nishanth Sagar Panthangi
Alumni
Manoj Aluri
Thesis: Porosity prediction and estimation in metal additive manufactured parts using deep learning
Current: Researcher in Material Science
Paloju Sathish Kumar
Thesis: Simulating federated learning in autonomous driving environments
Current: Researcher in Autonomous Driving
Yousef Alsenani
Thesis: Trust and Reliability-based frameworks for Secure Volunteer Cloud Computing
Current: Researcher in Cloud Computing Security
Majid Memari
Thesis: Comparative Analysis of VAE and GAN for Image Generation to Improve OCR System
Current: AI Researcher
Sandeep Goshika
Thesis: Using Deep learning to detect defects in soybean leaf
Current: Machine Learning Engineer in AgriTech
Abeer M. Almalky
Thesis: Developing deep learning CNN for Weed growth detection
Current: AI Researcher in Agriculture
Awards:
- Outstanding Thesis Award
Jawad Siddique
Thesis: Using Deep learning to mitigate animal-vehicle accidents
Current: Data Scientist
Subash Kharel
Thesis: Detecting Potholes using deep learning
Current: Computer Vision Engineer
Awards:
- Outstanding Thesis Award
Akhila Kambhatla
Thesis: Handgun detection in drone stream video using deep learning
Current: PhD Student at BASE Lab