Principal Scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University Senior Member of IEEE and ACM Past: UC Berkeley, Koç University
Doha, Qatar
Joined January 2012
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Just presented our work on satellite image classification under spatial domain shift across geographic regions at #AAAI2026.
If you’re working on robust methods for real-world distribution shifts and need realistic benchmarks, stay tuned—dataset coming soon.
w/ @sara_ai_alemadi
In NYC for the @UNDPPA E-Analytics & Innovation Course, sharing @QatarComputing's work on using social media & geospatial data for social good, and launching the new Diplomatic Pulse. Great to engage with UNHQ colleagues and explore how AI can support peace & security.
Yesterday at @UN Headquarters, we opened the 7th E-Analytics and Innovation Lab. Co-led by @QatarComputing and the @UNDPPA Innovation Cell. Colleagues across the UN Peace and Security Pillar will dive into design thinking, agentic AI and social media analysis. #UNInnovation
It was a great pleasure and honor to meet @DicarloRosemary, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, and have an engaging discussion on how GenAI can support @UNDPPA in achieving more inclusive, informed, and efficient conflict prevention and mediation.
Thrilled to welcome @QatarComputing partners to New York for our E-Analytics & Innovation Course. Together, we continue to explore how emerging practices in Artificial Intelligence can make our work in conflict prevention and mediation more inclusive, informed and efficient.
I'm excited to share that I've been promoted to Principal Scientist @QatarComputing . Deeply grateful to my colleagues, collaborators, and mentors who have supported me along the way. Looking forward to pushing further the boundaries of AI for social good and beyond.
ferda ofli retweeted
One of the biggest bottlenecks in deploying visual AI and computer vision is annotation, which can be both costly and time-consuming. Today, we’re introducing Verified Auto Labeling, a new approach to AI-assisted annotation that achieves up to 95% of human-level performance while cutting labeling costs by up to 100,000x and time by 5,000x.
Read the full paper: arxiv.org/abs/2506.02359
Happy to be recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer for #CVPR2025. Grateful for the opportunity to contribute, and I'll continue doing my best to serve the community at the highest level. #AcademicLife
Behind every great conference is a team of dedicated reviewers. Congratulations to this year’s #CVPR2025 Outstanding Reviewers!
cvpr.thecvf.com/Conferences/…
If detecting vehicles in high-resolution satellite images is your thing, then this research is for you!
nature.com/articles/s41597-0…
ALT VME: a Satellite Imagery Dataset and Benchmark for Detecting Vehicles in the Middle East and Beyond
Getting ready to serve as a judge at the CMUQ LifeLines Hackathon’25: “Hack to save lives.”
Looking forward to the presentations.
lifelinescmuq.org/
Our research on leveraging AI and social media for disaster response has been highlighted in the Climate Resilience Infrastructure Report, launched at #COP29 by @sust_coalition, featuring our AIDR and Incidents1M as innovative resources to strengthen climate resilience efforts.
ferda ofli retweeted
📝 New from FAIR: An Introduction to Vision-Language Modeling.
Vision-language models (VLMs) are an area of research that holds a lot of potential to change our interactions with technology, however there are many challenges in building these types of models. Together with a set of collaborators across academia, we’re releasing ‘An Introduction to Vision-Language Modeling’ — we hope that this new resource will help anyone who would like to enter this field to better understand the mechanics behind mapping vision to language.
Full paper ➡️ go.fb.me/ncjj6t
This guide covers how VLMs work, how to train them and approaches to evaluation — and while it primarily covers mapping image to language, it also discusses how to extend VLMs to videos.
We hope that releasing this guide will inspire and enable more work in this space.
ferda ofli retweeted
Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s Qatar Computing Research Institute #QCRI, together with the Innovation Cell of the Policy and Mediation Division at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs #UNDPPA, marked six years of collaboration in pioneering new technologies for fostering peace.
@HBKU @QatarComputing @UNDPPA
gulf-times.com/article/67840…
ferda ofli retweeted
Exciting news! Our paper on Flood Insights won the Deployed Application Award at the AAAI-IAAI conference in Vancouver!
We fuse remote & social sensing and geospatial data for impact assessments during floods. Kudos to the amazing team: Zainab, Umair, Aya, Rizwan, @ferdaofli
Today I had the pleasure of participating in the STEM Career Exploration Day at the American School of Doha. Glad to see high-schoolers so passionate about careers in science & technology. Thanks for the invitation and opportunity! @TheASDoha
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It was a pleasure hosting our friends from @UNDPPA at @QatarComputing for the fourth edition of the E-Analytics training course. 35+ UN staff participated in the 4-day event. @UN @MWaehlisch @akelmagarmid @ferdaofli @AmbAlyaAlThani @HBKU @QF
Reflecting on an incredible collaboration between QCRI and UN DPPA, the fourth 'E-Analytics and Innovation Lab' held in Doha from Jan 22-25 was an exciting journey into technological advancements for global peace efforts @mimran15
ferda ofli retweeted
Reflecting on an incredible collaboration between QCRI and UN DPPA, the fourth 'E-Analytics and Innovation Lab' held in Doha from Jan 22-25 was an exciting journey into technological advancements for global peace efforts @mimran15
ferda ofli retweeted
Thrilled to see @sdgstoday feature our Türkiye earthquake work, a collaboration with @UNDP Surge Data Hub team to map missing people, damages, and shelter requests at the district level. Work done at @QatarComputing of @HBKU & @QF @akelmagarmid @ferdaofli
storymaps.arcgis.com/collect…
I recently had the pleasure of giving an online lecture on using AI and non-traditional data for social good applications. It was great to see so many bright young minds come together in the 4th Annual Nepal AI School organized by @naamii_nepal. Thanks for the opportunity!
