I currently work as a Doctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg. I conduct research in Computer Vision, Situational Awareness, and Robotics, investigating possible solutions to make robots more intelligent and aware of their surroundings with the aid of vision sensors.

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📚 Fields of Interest

Computer Vision, Situational Awareness, Deep Learning, Robotics, Information Retrieval

🌎 Languages
English English C1
French Flag French B1
German Flag German A1
Luxembourgish Flag Luxembourgish A1
Arabic Flag Arabic A2
Turkish Flag Turkish A1
Persian Flag Persian Mother Tongue

🏆 Honors and Awards

Securing a Fully Funded Position in a Ph.D. Program

Acknowledged for securing a competitive position in a Ph.D. program amidst a pool of candidates for the project "TRANSCEND" funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Luxembourg (Mar. 2022)

The highest GPA among all Computer Engineering Students (Class of 2016)

Achieved the highest Grade Point Average (GPA) among all Computer Engineering students of the University of Guilan, Iran, in the class of 2016 for three consecutive semesters (Nov. 2017)

The Best Student Researcher Award

Issued by the Department of Computer Engineering of the University of Guilan, Iran, regarding the scientific and practical contributions and achievements as a student (Nov. 2017)

Scholarship for Master's in Computer Engineering

Granted through a nationwide examination process, competing among over 25,000 applicants (Sep. 2016)

Top-15 Business Planners Award

Issued by 10th Sheikh Bahai National Technopreneurship Competitions, Iran (May 2014)

Experiences

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

2022 - 2026 (expected)

Computer Science, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

  • Affiliation: SnT, Automation and Robotics Group (ARG)
  • Supervisor: Prof. Holger Voos
  • Project: TRansforming Autonomous Navigation, Swarm robotics, and Construction by ENcoding Data into surfaces (TRANSCEND)

Master of Science (M.Sc.)

2016 - 2019

Computer Engineering, University of Guilan, Iran

  • Department: Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
  • Supervisor: Prof. Asadollah Shahbahrami
  • Thesis: Automatic Vehicle Speeding Violation Detection using Video Processing (more)
  • Graduation: Defended on January 20, 2019 (Score: A+)

Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)

2009 - 2013

Computer Engineering, University of Guilan, Iran

  • Department: Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
  • Project: An E-Ticketing System for Medical Clinics

Employment

Doctoral Researcher

2022 - now (full-time)

Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT), Luxembourg

Conducting research to employ visual data to make robots more aware of their sorroundings (Situational Awareness) by forming digital twins

Full-Stack Developer

2019 - 2021 (full-time)

AVID Technology Development, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Working on various international web projects using SOTA tools, including Next.js, React.js, GraphQL, Node.js, Elasticsearch, Neo4j, MongoDB, etc.

Research Software Engineer

2019 - 2021 (part-time)

Guilan Science and Technology Park Business Incubator, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Conducting research on "Automatic Vehicle Detection & Tracking”

University Lecturer

2018 - 2021 (part-time)

University of Guilan, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Instructing “Computational Intelligence” (fours semesters) & “Computer Engineering Laboratory” (one semester) courses to undergraduate students

Android and Web Developer

2016 - 2017 (full-time)

Andish Bonyan Fannavar Varna, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Interactive E-Learning Content Developer

2013 - 2017 (contract)

IEHT Guilan Training Center, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Projects

  • All
  • Robotics
  • Computer Vision
  • Recommender Systems
  • Other

vS-Graphs Framework

A real-time visual SLAM framework, providing hierarchical graph-based scene representations

iMarkers for Advanced Robotics

A new generation of fiducial markers for robotics, invisible to humans but detectable by robots

Movie Recommener System

A movie recommender system based on frame-level extracted visual features

Point-of-Interest (PoI) RecSys

Various Point-of-Interest (PoI) recommender system tools and frameworks

Iranis Dataset

A Large-scale dataset of Farsi digits and letters extracted from vehicle license plates

Deep Learning ALPR

An end-to-end vehicle license plate detection and character recognition system based on YOLO

Academic Recommendation System

A smart academic recommender system to assisst researchers in their career

Deep Learning-based Vehicle Detection

A deep learning-based vehicle detection framework based on Faster R-CNN algorithm

Vehicle Speed Measurement

A motion-based vehicle speed measurement application for speeding violation detection

Interactive E-Content Development

Developing interactive e-Learning materials for various companies and educational centers

Human Tracking for Bank Security

A suspicious individual activity detection and tracking system for bank security

Vehicle Count and Traffic Monitoring

A system designed to accurately count the number of passing vehicles and estimate traffic flow

Online Appointment Booking

An E-booking platform developed for medical clinics

Parsiab Search Engine

A localized search engine for Persian (Farsi) academic documents

E-Learning Platform for Pre-Schoolers

E-Learning Platform for Pre-Schoolers

An interactive E-Learning application for pre-schoolers

Recent Publications

For the complete list, please check the All Publications page or my Google Scholar profile.

2025

Peer-review Journals

  • A. Tourani, S. Ejaz, H. Bavle, D. Morilla-Cabello, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, and H. Voos, “vS-Graphs: Integrating Visual SLAM and Situational Graphs through Multi-level Scene Understanding,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), [Under Review - ArXiv]
  • A. Tourani, D. AvĹźar, H. Bavle, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, and H. Voos, “Unveiling the Potential of iMarkers: Invisible Fiducial Markers for Advanced Robotics,” IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (RA-M), [Under Review - ArXiv]

2024

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, S. Ejaz, H. Bavle, H. Voos, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, and H. Voos, “Towards Localizing Structural Elements: Merging Geometrical Detection with Semantic Verification in RGB-D Data,” IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'24) - 14th Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 2024 [Link - ArXiv]
  • A. Radwan, A. Tourani, H. Bavle, H. Voos, and J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, “UAV-assisted Visual SLAM Generating Reconstructed 3D Scene Graphs in GPS-denied Environments,” International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS'24), Chania - Crete, Greece, 2024, pp. 1109-1116 [DOI - ArXiv]

Peer-review Journals

  • A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, D. AvĹźar, R. Munoz-Salinas, and H. Voos, “Vision-Based Situational Graphs Exploiting Fiducial Markers for the Integration of Semantic Entities,” Robotics, vol. 13, no. 7, p. 106 [DOI - ArXiv]
  • B. Ghari, A. Tourani, A. Shahbahrami, G. Gaydadjiev, “Pedestrian Detection in Low-Light Conditions: A Comprehensive Survey,” Image and Vision Computing [DOI - ArXiv]
  • A. Tourani, H. A. Rahmani, M. Naghiaei, and Y. Deldjoo, “CAPRI: Context-Aware Interpretable Point-of-Interest Recommendation Framework,” Software Impacts, vol. 19, p. 100606 [DOI -ArXiv]

2023

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, R. Munoz-Salinas, and H. Voos, “Marker-based Visual SLAM leveraging Hierarchical Representations,” Proceeding of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'23) [DOI -ArXiv]
  • A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, R. Munoz-Salinas, and H. Voos, “Hierarchical Visual SLAM based on Fiducial Markers,” International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'23) - Workshop on Active Methods in Autonomous Navigation [PDF - ArXiv]

Peer-review Journals

  • H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, C. Cimarelli, A. Tourani, and H. Voos, “From SLAM to Situational Awareness: Challenges and Survey,” Sensors, vol. 23, no. 10, p. 4849 [DOI - ArXiv - IF: 3.84 (Q1)]

2022

International Conferences

  • H.A. Rahmani, M. Naghiaei, A. Tourani, and Y. Deldjoo, “Exploring the Impact of Temporal Bias in Point-of-Interest Recommendation,” Proceeding of the 16th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys'22), pp. 598-603 [DOI - ArXiv - Code]
  • H.A. Rahmani, Y. Deldjoo, A. Tourani, and M. Naghiaei, “The Unfairness of Active Users and Popularity Bias in Point-of-Interest Recommendation,” Proceeding of the International Workshop on Algorithmic Bias in Search and Recommendation (Bias@ECIR), vol. 1610, pp. 56-68 [DOI - ArXiv - Code - Web-page]

Peer-review Journals

  • [🏆 Editor's Choice] A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, and H. Voos, “Visual SLAM: What Are the Current Trends and What to Expect?” Sensors, vol. 22, no. 23, p. 9297 [DOI - ArXiv - ECA Annoucement - IF: 3.84 (Q1)]
  • H. Agha, Y. Geng, X. Ma, D. AvĹźar, R. Kizhakidathazhath, Y.S. Zhang, A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, H. Voos, M. Schwartz, and J. P.F. Lagerwall, “Unclonable Human-invisible Machine Vision Markers Leveraging the Omnidirectional Chiral Bragg Diffraction of Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors,” Light: Science & Applications (Nature Publications), vol. 11, no. 309 [DOI - IF: 17.78 (Q1)]

Top Co-Authors

Holger Voos
Prof. H. Voos
SnT, University of Luxembourg
Jan Lagerwall
Prof. J. Lagerwall
University of Luxembourg
Rafael Muñoz Salinas
Prof. R. Munoz-Salinas
University of Cordoba
Asadollah Shahbahrami
Prof. A. Shahbahrami
University of Guilan
Ching Y. Suen
Prof. C.Y. Suen
Concordia University
Yashar Deldjoo
Prof. Y. Deldjoo
Polytechnic University of Bari
Jose Luis Sanchez-Lopez
Dr. J.L. Sanchez-Lopez
SnT, University of Luxembourg
Hriday Bavle
Dr. H. Bavle
GAMMA-AR
Claudio Cimarelli
Dr. C. Cimarelli
Circuli-ion
Saeed Khazaee
Dr. S. Khazaee
NexaDeeds
Alireza Akoushideh
Dr. A. Akoushideh
Technical and Vocational University
Hossein A. Rahmani
H.A. Rahmani
University College London
Deniz IĹźinsu AvĹźar
D. AvĹźar
University of Luxembourg
Mohammadmehdi Naghiaei
M. Naghiaei
University of Southern California

Review Activity

For the complete list, check my Web of Science profile.

International Conferences

  • IEEE InternSational Conference on Robots and Automation (ICRA'25) (link)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'25) (link)
  • IEEE InternSational Conference on Robots and Automation (ICRA'24) (link)
  • IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE'24) (link)
  • ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'24) (link)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'23) (link)
  • ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'23) (link)
  • International Conference on Computer Science and Application Engineering (CSAE'23) (link)
  • The Sixth Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT'23) (link)

Peer-reviewed Journals

Contents and Materials

University Lecture Materials

Course materials, presentations, and videos for the courses lectured for undergraduate students

Talks, Articles, and Presentations

Talks, articles, invited lectures, and presentations in various events

Blog - What's New?

Check my Blog for the complete list of the recent updates.

Check out my new Medium article, "Boost Your Research Visibility: Preprints before Submissions," now live! There, I discuss the importance of preprints in academic careers. Read it here.

Medium Article on "Preprints"

April 06, 2025 at 01:30

Happy to share that our paper has been accepted in 14th Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles in IROS'24 (pre-print)!

Paper Acceptance in "IROS'24"!

October 07, 2024 at 12:30

I am excited to share that our paper titled "Vision-Based Situational Graphs Exploiting Fiducial Markers for the Integration of Semantic Entities" is publicly available in Robotics (DOI)!

Paper Publication in "Robotics"!

July 16, 2024 at 10:30

🏆 I am thrilled to share that our survey paper has been selected as an "Editor's Choice Article" in MDPI Sensors journal (annoucement, link to the paper)!

Editor's Choice Article in "MDPI Sensors"!

July 05, 2024 at 11:30

I am very happy to annouce that our paper has been accepted and available in Elsevier's Image and Vision Computing journal (pre-print, DOI)!

Paper Acceptance in "IVC"!

June 11, 2024 at 22:30

I am happy to share that our paper has been accepted for presentation in the ICUAS'24 conference (read the pre-print)! See you in Chania, Greece!

Paper Acceptance in "ICUAS'24"!

April 04, 2024 at 10:30

I am happy to annouce that we will present our Late Breaking Results on the ongling project vS-Graphs at ICRA'24 conference!

Presentation in "ICRA'24"!

April 01, 2024 at 15:00

Happy to say that my author-level metric (h-index) reached 10 with 250+ citations on Google Scholar, reflecting my collaborations' impact in the community.

Academic Milestone Reached!

October 09, 2023 at 11:00

I am enthusiastic to annouce that our paper has been accepted for presentation in the main track of the IROS'23 Conference (read the pre-print)!

Paper Acceptance in "IROS'23"!

July 24, 2023 at 17:30

Contact Me

Feel free to reach out through email or find me on the Web ! 🤝

Address

29 boulevard JFK, L-1855 Luxembourg

Block E, E00 006

Email

ali [dot] tourani [at] uni [at] lu