EU

Meet the Team

M. Usman Rafique, Ph.D.

Senior R&D Engineer

Computer Vision

Kitware New York
Clifton Park, NY

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
University of Kentucky

M.S. in Mechatronics Engineering
National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan

B.E. in Mechatronics Engineering
National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan

Usman Rafique

M. Usman Rafique, Ph.D. is a senior R&D engineer on Kitware’s Computer Vision Team located in Clifton Park, New York. He conducts cutting-edge research related to ground-level and satellite images and everything in between. He develops computer vision and machine learning solutions to address problems related to image synthesis, scene understanding, and semantic segmentation.

Prior to joining Kitware, Usman was a graduate research and teaching assistant at the University of Kentucky. His research focused on weakly-supervised multi-image synthesis in various settings, ranging from overhead images to ground-level outdoor images. He developed deep learning-based image synthesis models for the tasks of style transfer, novel view synthesis, and image fusion. Usman also served as a research assistant at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. There, he researched solutions for a smart, reconfigurable battery system and worked on recurrent neural networks for robot control.

From 2010 – 2015, Usman was a lecturer at Air University Pakistan, where he taught courses on robotics and embedded systems. During his time there, he supervised two projects in which a team designed and fabricated a one-person electric car. These cars participated in international energy efficiency competitions, Shell Eco-marathon, in Malaysia (2011) and in the Philippines.

Usman also worked as a research and development engineer at SUPARCO, the national space agency of Pakistan. He was responsible for working on a variety of sensors in the attitude and orbit control system lab.

Usman received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky in 2021. He received both his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mechatronics engineering from the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Pakistan in 2010 and 2007, respectively.

Awards

  • Recognized as an outstanding reviewer by Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021

  • President’s Gold Medal presented by the National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan, 2010

Professional Associations & Service

  • Reviewer, Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2021

  • Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2020 – present

  • Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2019 – present

  • Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2017 – present

  • Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2017 – present

Publications

  1. S. Workman, M. Rafique, H. Blanton, and N. Jacobs, "Revisiting Near/Remote Sensing with Geospatial Attention," in In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2022. [URL]
  2. B. Brodie, S. Khanal, M. Rafique, C. Greenwell, and N. Jacobs, "Hierarchical Probabilistic Embeddings for Multi-View Image Classification," in 2021 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, 2021. [URL]
  3. S. Workman, M. Rafique, H. Blanton, C. Greenwell, and N. Jacobs, "Single Image Cloud Detection via Multi-Image Fusion," in IGARSS 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2020. [URL]
  4. M. Rafique and S. Cheung, "Tracking Attacks on Virtual Reality Systems," IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 41-46, Mar. 2020. [URL]
  5. M. Alam, M. Rafique, and M. Khan, "Mobile Robot Path Planning in Static Environments using Particle Swarm Optimization," arXiv:2008.10000 [cs], Aug. 2020. [URL]
  6. X. Xing, G. Liang, H. Blanton, M. Rafique, C. Wang, A. Lin, and N. Jacobs, "Dynamic Image for 3D MRI Image Alzheimer’s Disease Classification," in Computer Vision – ECCV 2020 Workshops. Springer International Publishing, 2020, pp. 355-364. [URL]
  7. M. Rafique, H. Blanton, N. Snavely, and N. Jacobs, "Generative Appearance Flow: A Hybrid Approach for Outdoor View Synthesis," in The British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), 2020. [URL]
  8. S. Muhammad, M. Rafique, S. Li, Z. Shao, Q. Wang, and X. Liu, "Reconfigurable Battery Systems: A Survey on Hardware Architecture and Research Challenges," ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 1-27, Mar. 2019. [URL]
  9. M. Rafique, H. Blanton, and N. Jacobs, "Weakly Supervised Fusion of Multiple Overhead Images," in 2019 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), 2019. [URL]
  10. M. Rafique and N. Jacobs, "Weakly Supervised Building Segmentation from Aerial Images," in IGARSS 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2019. [URL]
  11. M. Rafique, A. Mohammed, S. Li, A. Khan, and S. Kadry, "Integrating Open-Source Tools for Embedded Software Teaching: A Case Study," Advances in Engineering Education, pp. 27, 2019. [URL]
  12. N. Jacobs, A. Kraft, M. Rafique, and R. Sharma, "A weakly supervised approach for estimating spatial density functions from high-resolution satellite imagery," in Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, 2018. [URL]
  13. S. Li, H. Wang, and M. Rafique, "A Novel Recurrent Neural Network for Manipulator Control With Improved Noise Tolerance," IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 1908-1918, May 2018. [URL]
  14. S. Li, J. He, Y. Li, and M. Rafique, "Distributed Recurrent Neural Networks for Cooperative Control of Manipulators: A Game-Theoretic Perspective," IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 415-426, Feb. 2017. [URL]
  15. S. Muhammad, M. Rafique, S. Li, Z. Shao, Q. Wang, and N. Guan, "A Robust Algorithm for State-of-Charge Estimation With Gain Optimization," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 2983-2994, Dec. 2017. [URL]
  16. P. Su, J. Shen, and M. Rafique, "RGB-D Camera Network Calibration and Streaming for 3D Telepresence in Large Environment," in 2017 IEEE Third International Conference on Multimedia Big Data (BigMM), 2017. [URL]
  17. S. Steinhorst, Z. Shao, S. Chakraborty, M. Kauer, S. Li, M. Lukasiewycz, S. Narayanaswamy, M. Rafique, and Q. Wang, "Distributed reconfigurable Battery System Management Architectures," in 2016 21st Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), 2016. [URL]
  18. M. Alam, M. Rafique, Z. Kauser, and M. Saleem, "Swarm intelligence based multi-objective path planning in environments cluttered with danger sources," in 2016 17th International Conference on Mechatronics - Mechatronika (ME), 2016. [URL]
  19. M. Alam and M. Rafique, "Mobile robot path planning in environments cluttered with non-convex obstacles using particle swarm optimization," in 2015 International Conference on Control, Automation and Robotics, 2015. [URL]
  20. M. Rafique and K. Faraz, "Guidance based autonomous parking assistant," in 2010 The 2nd International Conference on Industrial Mechatronics and Automation, 2010. [URL]
  21. M. Usman Rafique and K. Faraz, "Modified Trajectory Shaping Guidance for autonomous parallel parking," in 2010 IEEE Conference on Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics, 2010. [URL]

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