PhD in Computer Science

March, 2020 - October, 2024 (Grade: A)

Thesis Title: Advanced Interactive Technologies for Group Functional Training in Eldercare: Design and Development

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

Masters in Computer Science

March, 2018 - February, 2020. (CGPA: 4.42/4.5 , Percentage: 98.4%)

Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea

Bachelor in Software Engineering

Sep. 2013 – Jun. 2017. (CGPA: 3.7/4.0, Percentage: 86.99%)

COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI), Pakistan

Honors & Awards

• Awarded with the ‘Silver Medal’ for academic excellence, consistency in performance, and securing a second position at the end of bachelor studies.
• Fully Funded Scholarship for Master Studies (2018-2020)
• Delivered Oral Presentation at Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) International Conference 2022, Gothenburg, Sweden.
• Delivered Oral Presentation at Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) International Conference 2021, Washington DC, USA.
• Delivered Oral Presentation at IEEE - International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) 2021, Islamabad, Pakistan.
• Delivered Oral Presentation at International Conference on Computer Science and its Applications 2018, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

System Developer & Project Leader

October, 2024 - Present

Mørenot Aquaculture AS, Digital Department, Norway

Key responsibilities:

• Develop Azure Functions in C# (.NET) that act as the ingestion layer for an IoT platform, streaming sensor data from external APIs into TimescaleDB for time-series analysis.
• Design and develop microservice-based REST APIs in C# (.NET), delivering scalable CRUD endpoints for high-volume IoT sensor data and powering AQUACOM—a web-based operations-and-maintenance platform for the aquaculture industry.
• Develop responsive front-end application of AQUACOM using the Aurelia framework with TypeScript, HTML, and CSS.
• Optimize database and query performance by applying indexing, continuous aggregates, an effective chunking strategy, and compression policies, ensuring fast and cost-efficient access to large volumes of IoT time-series data.
• Lead a data-science project encompassing data collection, preprocessing, model development, and evaluation to enable data-driven decision-making and predictive analytics.
• Utilize Microsoft Fabric Data Factory to build data pipelines and Azure ML to orchestrate MLOps and scalable machine-learning workflows.
• Design and maintain GitHub Actions workflows that automate CI/CD pipelines, enabling seamless build, test, and deployment of applications to Azure services.
• Leverage GitKraken to orchestrate Git workflows, auto-generate changelogs and pull-request templates, and improve team collaboration.
• Skills: Software Development, C#, .NET Core, REST APIs, Azure Functions, PostgreSQL, Aurelia, TypeScript, GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, Data Science, Azure ML, Data Factory, Python, Keras

Doctoral Researcher

March, 2020 – October, 2024

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

Key responsibilities:

• Codesigned and developed applications of modern interactive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and social robots to investigate their role in eldercare.
• Collected stakeholders' (elderly users and healthcare professionals) requirements by conducting user research and field studies.
• Designed meaningful user experiences by applying UX design methodologies such as usability testing and user interviews.
• Designed and developed machine learning algorithms for human activity recognition and time-series prediction for building intelligence and interactivity in applications for eldercare.
• Hands-on experience with Oculus Quest, Hololens 2, and humanoid robots such as Pepper and NAO robot.
• Designed data collection methods as well as planned and conducted user studies for final testing of user experience with the designed systems.
• Conducted detailed analysis of data collected in user studies for better insights into user experience and design principles.
• Published and presented research in high ranked international conferences and journals focused on HCI and expert systems.
• Skills: C#, Unity3D, Python, Keras, Activity Recognition, ROS, NumPy, UX design, User research, User statistics, Data analysis

University Lecturer

August, 2021 – Present

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

Key responsibilities:

• Designing and teaching two courses, i.e., Computer Graphics - IE500217 and Immersive Technologies - IE501914, to masters' students as a sole instructor.
• In the course titled 'Computer Graphics', students focus on theoretical concepts related to computer graphics and practically implement these concepts in a web-based project using WebGL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• In the course titled 'Immersive Technologies', students focus on the history and underlying concepts of VR/AR devices, UX design, and development of VR/AR applications using Unity3D. At the end of course, students deliver a final project which focuses on VR or AR application and UX design principles.
• Supervised bachelor and masters' students in specializing projects and thesis. Names of the projects are as follows:
• Intelligent Holographic Mixed Reality System For Health Workers In Nursing Homes (Masters)
• Multi-Agent Robot-based System to Monitor and Enforce Safety Measures against COVID-19 and Future Pandemics (Masters)
• Intelligent and Adaptive User Interfaces (Masters)
• Augmented Reality Based Application for Interior Designing (Bachelor)
• Companion Robot for Elderly at Nursing Homes (Bachelor)

Research Assistant

March, 2018 – February, 2020

Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea

Key responsibilities:

• Conducted research on the potential use of immersive technologies i.e., VR and MR, in multimedia entertainment and air traffic control.
• Applied UX design in collaboration with professionals and researchers from various departments including multimedia entertainment and aerospace to understand user needs.
• Codesigned and developed applications tailored to the user needs for better user experience.
• Planned and conducted user interviews and usability testing for understanding users’ perspective.
• Developed image processing algorithms for object tracking in 360° videos.
• Designed data collection methods as well as planned and conducted user studies.
• Detailed analysis of data yielded by user studies.
• Published and presented research in high ranked international conferences and journals focused on HCI and expert systems.
• Skills: C#, Unity3D, Python, OpenCV, UX design, User research, HCI research, User statistics, Data analysis

Full-stack Web Developer

July, 2017 – November, 2017

COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan

• Designed and developed multiple web applications.
• Planned activities and collaborated with concerned departments to understand their practices and needs, implement these requirements in the web system, and perform functional and usability testing.
• Implemented business logic as a backend developer as well as implement UI design as a frontend developer.
• Designed relational databases and implemented them using database management studio.
• Skills: Web development, Database design and development, C#, .NET core, REST APIs, SQL, Entity framework, NoSQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Web Forms, MVC, Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio