I am a scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI). My research is centered around safe reinforcement learning and structure prediction algorithms and motivated by applications in computer vision and health intelligence. I obtained my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working with Prof. Alexander Schwing. I graduated with Bachelor and Master degrees in Electrical engineering and Information technology from the Technical University of Munich. I also obtained a Master degree in Computer engineering from Virginia Polytechnic and State University, advised by Prof. Sandeep Shukla. I was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, where I worked on my master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli and Prof. Andreas Herkersdorf.
SAFA MESSAOUD
News
Oct. 2022
Oct. 2022
July. 2022
Jan. 2022
July. 2021
Apr. 2021
I am serving as a reviewer for the Gaze Meets ML workshop @ NeurIPS 22
I will be giving a talk at MLDAS symposium organized by Boeing and QCRI at MIT
I am serving as as a senior program committee member for AAAI 23
Accepted an offer for a scientist position at Qatar Computing Research Institute
Paper accepted at DRL4IR for oral presentation
Paper accepted at SIGIR
Can We Learn Heuristics For Graphical Model Inference Using Reinforcement Learning?
Woman in Computer Vision Workshop (WiCV) 2020 -Oral Presentation-
Deep Vision Workshop 2020
DeepQAMVS: Query-Aware Hierarchical Pointer Networks for Multi-Video Summarization
DRL4IR Workshop (SIGIR) 2021 -Oral Presentation-
Structural Consistency and Controllability for Diverse Colorization
Medical record problem list generation
Unsupervised analysis of transcriptomic data for demystifying the cause of Alzheimer disease
Reaction–diffusion modelling for microphysiometry on cellular specimens
Accelerating genomic data parsing on field programmable gate arrays
Translating Discrete Time SIMULINK to SIGNAL
Optimal Architecture Synthesis for Aircraft Electrical Power Systems
Teaching
Resume
Education
Leadership and Service
2023
- Co-organizing Woman in Data Science (WiDS) conference in Doha, Qatar
2022
- Senior program committee chair member for AAAI 23; Reviewer for Gaze Meets ML workshop @ NeurIPS 22
Honors
- The Grace Hooper Scholarship for Women in Computing, 2015.
- The Heinrich and Muhlfenzl Scholarship for exchange students during my stay in Berkeley, 2013.
- Automotive, Railway and Avionic Multicore Systems Grant from the German Research Ministry (Fund for my research in Berkeley), 2013.
- Scholarship awarded by the Tunisian Government and the DAAD for Bachelor and Masters degrees in Germany for ranking among the top 10 students in Tunisia in the national high school examination (Baccalaureat en Mathematiques). GPA: 19.54/20.
- Prize of the regional "Journée du savoir" in Sfax, Tunisia awarded three times (7, 8, 10th grades) for ranking first in the governorate of Sfax.
PhD Courses
- CS 466: Introduction to Bioinformatics (A+)
- CS 547: Deep Learning (A+)
- CS 473: Algorithms (B-)
- ECE 411: Computer Organization and Design (A)
- ECE 391: Computer Systems Engineering (A)
- ECE 542: Design of Fault Tolerant Digital Systems (A-)
Programming Skills
SW: Python, MATLAB, Pytorch, Tensorflow, C/C++
HW: Verilog, VHDL, OpenCL
Work Experience
- Research Assistant
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Illinois, USA
HOBBIES
I am very curious, enjoy learning new skills and exploring new ideas, art, cultures and food. I speak four languages fluently: Arabic, French, German (FSP 1.0) and English. As a teenager, I did a lot of ceramics, silk, glass and oil painting. Later on, I found joy in computer vision research. I also play piano and enjoy reading and traveling.