Year 2021 Summary

Created on July 25, 2021

2021

I completed my PHD study in Aug. 2021.

Archived news during my PhD study:

2021.07: Defended my Ph.D. Thesis: “Stochastic Optimization in Target Positioning and Location-based Applications”!!
2021.06: Our Waste Management project is selected to present in Swiss–Middle East Circular Economy for Youth Initiative (SMECEYI), Swiss Pavilion, Expo Dubai, UAE.
2021.04: Our Smart Tap project won first place in the Digital Research track at the Digital Innovation Awards, launched by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Saudi Arabia.
2021.01: Our work is accepted by IEEE Signal Processing Letters: “A Maximum-Likelihood TDOA Localization Algorithm Using Difference-of-Convex Programming.”
2021.01: Presented (Oral) our paper in Eusipco 2020 (online), Amsterdam, Netherlands:”Phase-Difference-Based 3-D Source Localization Using a Compact Receiver Configuration.”
2020.10: Participated NEOM AI Challenge as 1 of the 3 KAUST Teams (100+ teams from 40 universities) with Utopia Project (Smart Tap), we made it to the TOP-5 finalist in Energy-Track.
2020.05: Our work is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement: “Air-Writing via Receiver Array Based Ultrasonic Source Localization.”
2020.04: Our work is accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications Letters: “A Joint TDOA-PDOA Localization Approach Using Particle Swarm Optimization.”
2020.04: Started an Internship at NEOM working as a Mixed Reality Developer.
2019.09: Presented (Oral) our paper in Eusipco 2019, A Coruna, Spain: “Realtime 2-D DOA Estimation Using Phase-Difference Projection (PDP).”
2019.08: Started to work as an RA (Residential Assistant) in the Office of Residential Life, Graduate Affairs, KAUST.
2019.08: One US Patent filed, No.10,386,481: “Angle-of-Arrival-Based Gesture Recognition System and Method.”
2019.02: Presented (Poster) our paper in IEEE VR 2019, Osaka, Japan: “A Decomposition Approach for Complex Gesture Recognition Using DTW and Prefix Tree.”
2019.03: Our startup “Nommas” is selected into Taqadam Accelerator (2019-Cohort 3) with $20K USD funding.
2019.01: Our startup “Nommas” (previously ‘Wisensing’) is selected into the Taqadam Pre-Accelerator phase from 518 applications.
2018.11: Presented (Poster) our paper in GlobalSIP 2018, Anaheim, USA: “Fast Phase-Difference-Based DoA Estimation Using Random Ferns.”
2018.08: TA in graduate course EE242 Digital Communication and Coding (2018-2019 Fall).
2018.08: Guided two summer interns with project “Real-time Arabic Air-writing Character Recognition”.
2018.04: Presented “UBAS: An Ultrasound Based Air-writing System” in ICASSP 2018 Demo session, Calgary, Canada.
2017.09: Presented (Oral) our paper in Eusipco 2017, Kos, Greece: “Angle-of-Arrival-Based Gesture Recognition Using Ultrasonic Multi-frequency Signals.”
2017.08: TA in graduate course EE242 Digital Communication and Coding (2017-2018 Fall).
2017.04: Obtained the 4th place in 2017 Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition.
2017.02: Successfully passed the written EE PhD qualifying exam.
2016.08: Started my PhD study (with full financial funding, KAUST Fellowship) in Electrical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).