๐Ÿง About Me

Hi there! I am a first year PhD. candidate in Computer Vision at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). I completed my MS in Machine Learning at MBZUAI under the supervision of Dr. Karthik Nandakumar and Dr. Mohammad Yaqub.

Research Interests: I am mainly interested in model-centric AI and data-centric machine learning, including data privacy, model robustness, domain generalization, and healthcare related applications. My research investigates how to elevate data-centric approaches to improving the performance of machine learning models. Currently, I am securing large vision models (LVMs) so that they can be relied upon for effective real-world deployment. Previously, I focused on the following research topics:

  • Data Efficiency: Knowledge Distillation, Distribution Alignment
  • Data Security: Adversarial Training, Model Extraction Attack
  • Domain Generalization: Ensembling, Zero-shot Generalization
  • Healthcare-related Applications: Federated Learning, Imbalanced Learning

๐Ÿค” For my MS thesis, I explored the aspects of domain generalization at test time, without any additional model training or fine-tuning, associated with in-domain, out-domain, and cross-domain data, particularly zero-shot generalization of large vision models like CLIP.

๐Ÿ”ฅ News

๐Ÿ“ Selected Publications

(* indicates equal contribution; # indicates corresponding authorship.)

BMVC 2024
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FLARE up your data: Diffusion-based Augmentation Method in Astronomical Imaging
Raza Imam*#, Mohammed Talha Alam*, Mohsen Guizani, Fakhri Karray. (BMVC 2024) code(+)data

  • FLARE is a diffusion-based augmentation method which initially enhances the resolution of raw input samples. Given the widespread dispersion of these raw inputs in feature space, we have implemented a two-stage augmentation strategy. Also, we introduce an optimally distributed dataset via FLARE: SpaceNet, comprising approximately 12,900 samples.
SPAICE 2024
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CosmoCLIP: Generalizing Large Vision-Language Models for Astronomical Imaging
Raza Imam*#, Mohammed Talha Alam*, Umaima Rahman, Mohsen Guizani, Fakhri Karray. (SPAICE 2024)

  • We introduce CosmoCLIP, an astronomical image-text contrastive learning framework precisely fine-tuned on the pre-trained CLIP model using SpaceNet and BLIP-based captions. The rich semantics derived from this SpaceNet and BLIP descriptions, when learned contrastively, enable CosmoCLIP to achieve superior generalization across various in-domain and out-of-domain tasks in astronomical imaging.
ICCE 2024
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EVOKE: Emotion Enabled Virtual Avatar Mapping Using Optimized Knowledge Distillation
Maryam Nadeem#, Raza Imam*, Rouqaiah Al-Refai*, Meriem Chkir, Mohamad Hoda, Abdulmotaleb El Saddik. (ICCE 2024)

  • EVOKE leverages knowledge distillation involving multi-label classification on the publicly available DEAP dataset, which covers valence, arousal, and dominance as primary emotional classes. Remarkably, our distilled model, a CNN with only two convolutional layers and 18 times fewer parameters than the teacher model, achieves competitive results, boasting an accuracy of 87% while demanding far less computational resources. This equilibrium between performance and deployability positions our framework as an ideal choice for virtual environment systems. Furthermore, the multi-label classification outcomes are utilized to map emotions onto custom-designed 3D avatars.
MICCAI 2023, spotlight
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SEDA: Self-ensembling ViT with Defensive Distillation and Adversarial Training for Robust Chest X-Rays Classification
Raza Imam#, Ibrahim Almakky, Salma Alrashdi, Baketah Alrashdi, Mohammad Yaqub. (MICCAI 2023) code

  • SEDA utilizes efficient CNN blocks to learn spatial features with various levels of abstraction from feature representations extracted from intermediate ViT blocks, that are largely unaffected by adversarial perturbations. Furthermore, SEDA leverages adversarial training in combination with defensive distillation for improved robustness against adversaries. Extensive experiments performed with the proposed architecture and training paradigm on publicly available Tuberculosis x-ray dataset shows SOTA efficacy of SEDA compared to SEViT in terms of computational efficiency with 70x times lighter framework and enhanced robustness of +9%.
MIUA 2023
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On enhancing the robustness of Vision Transformers: Defensive Diffusion
Raza Imam, Muhammad Huzaifa#, Mohammed El-Amine Azz. (MIUA 2023) code

  • In this work, we introduced a defensive diffusion technique as an adversarial purifier to eliminate adversarial noise introduced by attackers in the original image. By utilizing the denoising capabilities of the diffusion model, we employ a reverse diffusion process to effectively eliminate the adversarial noise from the attack sample, resulting in a cleaner image that is then fed into the ViT blocks. Extensive experiments conducted on a publicly available Tuberculosis X-ray dataset validate the computational efficiency and improved robustness achieved by our proposed architecture.
Elsevier JKSU
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A systematic literature review of attribute based encryption in health services
Raza Imam, Kaushal Kumar, Syed Mehran Raza, Rumi Sadaf, Faisal Anwer#, Noor Fatima, Mohammad Nadeem, Mohamed Abbas, Obaidur Rahman. (Elsevier JKSU)

  • This survey presents a systematic and comprehensive study of ABE works concerning E-Health as the authors rigorously investigate healthcare-focused ABE frameworks and examine them based on various descriptive criteria, along with categorizing them systematically in 10 distinct domains and sub-domains, ultimately offering observations and potential recommendations. The descriptive research design, significant findings along with the suggested future works will help future research in ABE to secure the existing E-Health data sharing more effectively.

๐ŸŽ– Honors and Awards

  • 2024.07 Ranked first among 177 applicants for the PhD position at University of Twente, Netherlands, 2024
  • 2024.06 Secured Fully Funded Scholarship for Graduate School at MBZUAI for PhD program in Computer Vision
  • 2023.11 Selected for Abstract Presentation, at PlanetX challenge by UAE Space Agency, Dubai Air Show, UAE
  • 2023.09 Selected for Spotlight Presentation, at DART Workshop, 26th MICCAI, Vancouver, Canada
  • 2023.07 Nominated for Best Paper Award, under Abstract Category, at 27th Conference on MIUA, Scotland
  • 2022.08 Secured Fully Funded Scholarship for Graduate School at MBZUAI for MS program in Machine Learning
  • 2018.12 Received Merit-Cum Means Scholarship, 2018 for attending bachelorโ€™s program by Indian government

๐Ÿ“– Educations

  • ๐ŸŽ“ 2024.08 - Present, PhD in Computer Vision, Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
  • ๐ŸŽ“ 2022.08 - 2024, Masters in Machine Learning, Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
  • ๐ŸŽ“ 2019.08 - 2022.06, Bachelors in Computer Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.

๐Ÿ’ฌ Services

  • Journal Reviewer:
    • IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology
    • IEEE Access
  • Conference Reviewer: Sustainability and Resilience Conference (SRC) 2021, 2022, 2023.

๐Ÿ’ป Internships

๐ŸŽ™ Miscellaneous

Travel

I enjoy traveling with my family and friends. I am always excited about visiting new places and learning about different cultures.

Sports

I love playing sports and always make time for football, badminton, and table tennis. I have played taekwondo professionally before and represented my university in badminton and table tennis competitions.

Football Team
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MBZUAI Sports Week
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Georgia Trip
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