John Zelek – VISION AND IMAGE PROCESSING (VIP) RESEARCH GROUP

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

Ryan Schmalenberg

Ryan Schmalenberg — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 19:15:46 +0000

Hi, my name is Ryan Schmalenberg. I am a graduate of the Master of Applied Science program in Systems Design Engineering. My work in the VIP lab relates to 3D computer vision through camera calibration, and is specifically related to validating methods for accurate camera calibration from out-of-focus images, which is required for long focal length cameras.

Email: rnschmal [at] uwaterloo [dot] ca
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-schmalenberg
GitHub: https://github.com/Engnation
Thesis: https://hdl.handle.net/10012/21120

Research topics

Computer Vision

Publications

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Research interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of computer vision, robotics and deep neural networks with a particular focus on exploring extensions of real-world conditions through simulations.

Supervisors

John Zelek

Liam Salass

Liam Salass — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 20:21:29 +0000

Liam is a Master of Applied Science candidate in System Design Engineering at Waterloo. He completed his undergraduate studies at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Engineering in Computer Engineering. Liam’s previous research as an undergrad was in 6 degrees of freedom pose estimation as part of the RCVLab. Currently, Liam is contributing to the sports analytics research group (SARG) in VIP Lab.

Email: liam.salass@uwaterloo.ca
Github: https://github.com/Liamsalass
LinkedIn: (26) Liam Salass | LinkedIn

Research interests

——-

Supervisors

David Clausi, John Zelek

Publications

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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

Yan Song Hu

Kevin Hu — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 12:26:17 +0000

I am Yan Song (Kevin) Hu, a Master’s candidate in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of McMaster with minors in mathematics and business. Under the supervision of Professor John Zelek, my research combines 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) in order to further the Spatial AI field.

My most major contribution is the development of a novel volumetric dense SLAM system that harness the synergy between the photometric SLAM system Direct Sparse Odometry (DSO) and 3DGS, thereby achieving a combination of speed, map quality, and memory efficiency unmatched by other dense SLAM systems. This innovative SLAM system is currently under review for the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

Email: y324hu@uwaterloo.ca

Site: https://yansonghu-lele.github.io/

Demonstration of my Dense SLAM System

Short GIFs of my dense SLAM system working live on the Replica and EUROC MAV datasets

Supervisors

John Zelek

Research interests

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)
Spatial AI

Research topics

Computer Vision

Matthew Bradley

Matthew Bradley — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:40:49 +0000

At the VIP Lab Matthew has worked to improve the robustness of Visual Place Recognition to environmental effects through an MASc supervised by Dr. John Zelek. VPR is used to detect when a camera returns to a previously-visited location and is core to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), itself a mainstay of mobile robotics including self-driving vehicles. Matthew’s research has been focused on integrating visually-recovered 3D structure into VPR, as this is robust to illumination and viewpoint changes that hinder the versatility of appearance-based methods. Matthew holds a prior BEng degree in computer engineering from Toronto Metropolitan University with added focus in computer vision, robotics, and machine learning.

Email: m7bradle@uwaterloo.ca
Github: https://github.com/m7bradle

Supervisors

John Zelek

Research interests

Matthew’s research interests are in Structure From Motion (SFM), (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) SLAM, scene understanding, and robotics.

Research topics

Computer Vision

Publications

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Yuxiang Huang

Yuxiang Huang — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 21:00:08 +0000

Yuxiang Huang is a Master of Applied Science student in Systems Design Engineering, supervised by Prof. John Zelek and associated with the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Lab. His research focuses on motion segmentation and structure from motion. Prior to this, he completed his Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering degree with a Minor in Statistics at the University of British Columbia.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn

Supervisors

John Zelek

Research interests

Motion Segmentation, 3D Computer Vision, Structure from Motion, Image Segmentation

Research topics

Computer Vision
Video Analysis

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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Chun-Cheng (Kris) Feng

Chun-Cheng Feng — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 02:45:59 +0000

Chun-Cheng Feng is currently a Master of Applied Science student at the VIP lab in Systems Design Engineering, under the supervision of Professor John Zelek. His current research focus is on camera calibration and photometric calibration.

Email: c39feng@uwaterloo.ca

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chun-cheng-feng-038393186

Supervisors

John Zelek

Research interests

Chun-Cheng’s research interests include feature tracking, computer vision and machine learning.

Research topics

Computer Vision
Video Analysis

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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