Ph.D. – VISION AND IMAGE PROCESSING (VIP) RESEARCH GROUP

Soheil Soltani

Soheil Soltani — Sat, 02 May 2026 00:33:07 +0000

Soheil Soltani is a machine learning engineer and researcher with over six years of experience building AI-powered systems across various industries. His core expertise spans computer vision, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance, and large language models — including multi-agent systems, retrieval-augmented generation, and natural language interfaces — with a track record of deploying robust solutions in safety-critical industrial environments.

Supervisors

David Clausi

Dr. Freda Shi

Youssef Nafea

Youssef Nafea — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:06:04 +0000

I am Youssef, a PhD candidate in Systems Design Engineering (SYDE) at the University of Waterloo. My research focuses on remote sensing, with an emphasis on sea ice classification and cloud detection using machine learning and satellite imagery. I hold a Master’s degree in Natural Language Processing and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering.

Supervisors

David Clausi

Research interests

Computer Vision, Sea Ice Classification

Publications

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Kseniia (Ksusha) Buzko

Kseniia Buzko — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:33:34 +0000

Kseniia (Ksusha) Buzko is a PhD student in the Systems Design Engineering program. She is supervised by Prof. John Zelek and Prof. Yuhao Chen. Her research interests include video understanding, action recognition, and video generation.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kseniiabuzko/

Research topics

Computer Vision
Sports Analytics
Video Analysis

Supervisors

John Zelek, Yuhao Chen

Ziyao Shang

Zhibo Wang — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:05:46 +0000

Ziyao is a PhD student in Systems Design Engineering, co-supervised by Prof. Sirisha Rambhatla and Prof. Alex Wong. Ziyao is a member of the Critical ML Lab.

Supervisors

Alexander Wong, Sirisha Rambhatla

Publications

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Research interests

Research interests Biomedical Imaging, Image Segmentation/Classification

Amy Tai

Amy Tai — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 01:06:08 +0000

Amy Tai is a PhD student in the Vision and Image Processing Lab at the University of Waterloo. She is in the Computer Science program and supervised by Alexander Wong and Lukasz Golab. Her research focuses on the cancer domain with focus on medical imaging and computer vision. Previously, she completed her Master of Applied Sciences in the Systems Design Engineering program and her Bachelor of Applied Science in Management Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Outside of research, she enjoys playing squash, travelling, hiking, and swimming.

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/amy-tai

Supervisors

Alexander Wong

Research interests

Amy’s research areas include medical image analysis, personalized nutrition intervention for the aging population, and improved rendering of 3D models. As a lead on the Cancer-Net initiatives, she is focused on providing open-sourced datasets and pre-trained models for the task of cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and nutritional intake estimation, respectively. In general, Amy is interested in medical research that leverages technological advancements to improve healthcare for all.

Research topics

Biomedical Imaging
Computer Vision
Image Segmentation/Classification

Research demos

Publications

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Zhibo Wang

Zhibo Wang — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:24:44 +0000

Zhibo is a Ph.D. student in Systems Design Engineering, co-supervised by Prof. David Clausi and Prof. Sirisha Rambhatla. He is a member of the Sports Analytics Research Group, and his research will focus on pose estimation and action recognition for ice-hockey game.

Supervisors

David Clausi, Sirisha Rambhatla

Publications

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Research topics

Computer Vision
Sports Analytics

Jerrin Bright

Jerrin Bright — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 20:15:08 +0000

Jerrin Bright is a doctoral student in Systems Design Engineering, supervised by Prof. John Zelek associated with the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Lab. Jerrin’s research focuses on understanding and interacting with the dynamic, 3D world around us, with a particular emphasis on human behavior. By combining computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning, Jerrin is exploring how to capture, perceive, and understand the 4D world from what we can see in 2D images and videos. Jerrin’s goal is to develop systems that can learn priors about the 4D world from visual data, enabling us to build more realistic and interactive virtual environments centered around human activity.

Before this, he completed his Master’s degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and his Bachelor’s degree from Vellore Institute of Technology, India where he explored diverse research topics including SLAM for UAVs, visual odometry, camera calibration, and mechanical designing and simulations for ground vehicles, UAVs and VTOLs.

Email: jerrin.bright@uwaterloo.ca
Portfolio: https://jerrinbright.github.io/

Supervisors

John Zelek

Research interests

Jerrin’s research interests include 3D human modeling, motion synthesis, human pose estimation, and scene reconstruction.

Research topics

Computer Vision
Sports Analytics

Ken M. Nsiempba

Ken Nsiempba — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:58:55 +0000

I was born and raised in the greater Montreal area and am currently pursuing my PhD studies at the University of Waterloo in the Systems Design Engineering department. I completed my undergraduate degree at McGill University and obtained my master’s degree from the University of Waterloo in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. I started my PhD after working in the industry for three years.

https://botengu.github.io/portfolio

Supervisors

David Clausi, John Zelek

Research interests

As a trained mechanical engineer, I have cultivated proficiency in computational design. This, in turn, lead me to delve into the realm of computer vision. My research field is computer vision for sports analytics. Mainly, I teach computers how to interpret ice hockey games events by improving player tracking, action recognition and play detection.

Research topics

Computer Vision
Sports Analytics

Publications

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Peter Q. Lee

Peter Lee — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 18:39:19 +0000

Peter Lee is currently a PhD student (2020 – ) supervised by Prof. Katja Mombaur and Prof. John Zelek. His research interests include optimal control, compliant control with force feedback, and visual servoing. He is currently working to automate the nasopharyngeal swab test using the collaborative Franka Emika 1 research arm.

Supervisors

John Zelek

Research interests

Research interests include optimal Control, Compliant control, and Visual Servoing

Research topics

Computer Vision

Publications

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Kanav Vats

Muhammed Patel — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 10:55:10 +0000

Kanav was a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Prof. David Clausi and Prof. John Zelek. He worked on computer vision-based sports analytics, with a focus on problems such as player tracking, player identification, event detection, and pose estimation. His research had applications in team sports like hockey and soccer. He is currently working as a Machine Learning Engineer at Apple.

Supervisors

David Clausi, John Zelek

Publications

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