Bennamoun Mohammed

Bennamoun Mohammed

Category : Mathematics - Computer science - Artificial intelligence

BENNAMOUN Mohammed

Bennamoun_Mohammed.jpg

Winthrop Professor

University of Western Australia (UWA), Australia

Field(s) of expertise: Mathematics - Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence

Origins & Education

Born in Constantine, Algeria, Mohammed Bennamoun completed his secondary education at Youghourta High School in Constantine. He pursued his higher education with foundational studies at the University of Constantine, before obtaining his Engineering degree from the École Polytechnique d'Alger. His education continued internationally with a Master's degree from Queen's University in Canada, specializing in Control Theory. He then completed his academic journey with a PhD conducted between Canada and Australia, at Queen's University and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, focusing on Computer Vision.

Scientific Career

Professor Mohammed Bennamoun began his career teaching Robotics at Queen's University. In 1993, he joined Queensland University of Technology (QUT) as an Associate Lecturer, before being promoted to Lecturer in 1996, and then Senior Lecturer in 1998. During this period, he also served as the Director of a Research Center from 1998 to 2002.

In January 2003, he joined the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at The University of Western Australia (UWA) as an Associate Professor and was later promoted to Professor in 2007. He currently holds the prestigious position of Winthrop Professor. He also served as the Head of the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at UWA for five years, from February 2007 to March 2012.

His international career is marked by several Visiting Professor positions:

  • Erasmus Mundus Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 2006
  • Visiting Professor at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and Telecom Lille1, France, in 2009
  • Visiting Professor at the Helsinki University of Technology in 2006
  • Visiting Professor at the University of Bourgogne and Paris 13 University in France in 2002-2003

His research work primarily focuses on Artificial Intelligence, including Computer Vision, Deep Learning, signal and speech processing, with applications in the fields of Robotics, Medicine, Agriculture, transportation, and more.

Professor Bennamoun is the author of four reference books available on Amazon:

  • "Object Recognition: Fundamentals and Case Studies", Springer-Verlag, 2001
  • "A Guide to Convolutional Neural Networks for Computer Vision"
  • "3D Shape Analysis: Fundamentals, Theory, and Applications"
  • "Neural Representations of Natural Language"

His scientific output is remarkable with more than 240 publications in scientific journals and over 300 publications in international conferences.

Distinctions & Recognition

Professor Bennamoun has received numerous distinctions throughout his career:

  • UWA Vice-Chancellor's Research Mentorship Award in 2016 (only one award granted per year in this category across the entire UWA)
  • UWA Award for Teaching Excellence for Research Supervision in 2016, commended for his "outstanding contributions and for going above and beyond, to inspire, support and educate"
  • "Best Supervisor of the Year" Award at QUT
  • Award for research supervision at UWA in 2008
  • Two best paper awards in 2024: one from the Proceedings of the IEEE and another from the IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine

He was also invited to deliver courses at the International Summer School on Deep Learning (DeepLearn 2017 and DeepLearn 2022).

In terms of editorial responsibilities:

  • Senior Area Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (impact Factor = 11.041)
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence
  • Guest editor for several special issues in international journals, such as the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (IEEE TPAMI) and the International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence (IJPRAI)

In the conference domain, he was selected to give tutorials at prestigious conferences:

  • European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)
  • International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (IEEE ICASSP)
  • International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2016)

He has also organized several special sessions for conferences, notably for the IEEE International Conference in Image Processing (IEEE ICIP), and has been on the program committee of many conferences, such as 3D Digital Imaging and Modeling (3DIM) and the International Conference on Computer Vision. He is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches at international conferences.

At the institutional level, he served as a member of the ARC (Australian Research Council) College of Experts from 2012 to 2015 and from 2019 to 2021, as well as a member of the ARC ERA (Excellence Research for Australia) in 2018. He is also a member of the College of Assessors for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand.

Impact & Influence

Professor Bennamoun's impact in the field of Artificial Intelligence is substantial, as evidenced by his impressive list of publications and high citation index on Google Scholar. His work has significantly contributed to the development of Computer Vision, particularly in the area of 3D analysis, object recognition, and biometrics.

His research has practical applications in various strategic sectors such as medicine, agriculture, transportation, and robotics. His expertise in machine learning and deep learning has enabled notable advances in these fields.

As a teacher and mentor, he has trained numerous researchers and students who now pursue academic and industrial careers, thus amplifying his influence in the field. His ability to secure significant research funding demonstrates the recognition of the value of his work by the scientific community and funding agencies.

His role on editorial boards of prestigious journals and his involvement in organizing major international conferences also testify to his influence and reputation in the global scientific community.

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