About
Dr. Ferda Ofli is a Principal Scientist and Co-Lead of the Crisis Computing team at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). Prior to joining QCRI in 2014, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds dual BSc degrees in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and Computer Engineering, as well as a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye. His research lies at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, and remote sensing, with a strong emphasis on applications for social good—particularly in disaster response, crisis management, and sustainable development. He has authored more than 80 publications in top-tier venues such as CVPR, ECCV, WWW, AAAI, IJCV, and PAMI, and is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM. His contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the AAAI Deployed Application Award (2024), Best Paper and Insight Paper Awards at ISCRAM (2019–2020), the Elsevier JVCI Best Paper Award (2015), and the IEEE SIU Best Student Paper Award (2011). He has also received multiple Outstanding Reviewer Awards from CVPR (2020, 2021, 2025) and SIU (2023). Beyond academia, his work has been featured in BBC, New Scientist, Wired, and other mainstream media outlets.
Experience
Principal Scientist
Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University
I continue to contribute QCRI's mission by leading impactful research projects in the AI for Social Good space, fostering collaboration with humanitarian stakeholders, and mentoring junior researchers.
Senior Scientist
Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Worked on several projects in the humanitarian space ranging from social media image analysis for damage assessment and disaster response to satellite imagery analysis for poverty mapping.
Scientist
Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University
One thread of my research activities at QCRI seeks to bring new perspectives from computer vision and machine learning into crisis computing and disaster response. Another thread explores new research grounds for developing innovative solutions in the medical and healthcare domain by combining wearable and mobile technology with social media monitoring and data mining techniques.
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of California, Berkeley
With Professor Ruzena Bajcsy, I worked on human activity understanding from multi-sensory data: (i) Collected a multimodal human action database (released as "Berkeley MHAD") consisting of temporally synchronized and geometrically calibrated data from an optical motion capture system, multi-view multi-baseline camera arrays, depths sensors, accelerometers and microphones. (ii) Developed a new representation of human actions called Sequence of the Most Informative Joints (SMIJ) and demonstrated on multiple datasets that the SMIJ representation outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms in human action recognition. (iii) Worked on the design and development of a Microsoft Kinect-based physical exercise system for remote coaching of the elderly population.
Education
Koc University
PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Koc University
BS in Computer Engineering
Koc University
BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Skills
Key Publications
No publications added yet.