Emmanuel Okafor

- Research focus on deep reinforcement learning for robotic object sorting and control of drum boiler steam flow, interpretable deep learning for disease prediction (pneumonia, COVID-19, brain tumor, breast cancer, and skin lesions) and image captioning, and explainable machine learning for salinity forecasting

- Supervised 5 undergraduate students in machine learning and computer vision projects

- Authored 15 articles (9 published journal articles, 5 articles under peer-review, and 1 in preparation)

- Attend enrichment seminars and workshops to stay abreast of the latest innovations in the field of Artificial Intelligence

- Teaching a foundational programming course (Introduction to Programming in Python and C) to first-year students at KFUPM.

Research focus on deep reinforcement learning for robotic object sorting and control of drum boiler steam flow, interpretable deep learning for disease prediction and image captioning, and explainable machine learning for salinity forecasting
Student evaluation feedback score of 9.35/10.00
Supervised 5 undergraduate students in machine learning and computer vision projects
Authored 15 articles - 9 published journal articles, 5 articles under peer-review, and 1 in preparation
Attend enrichment seminars and workshops to stay abreast of the latest innovations in the field of Artificial Intelligence

- Appointed as an Assistant Lecturer (2013) and promoted to Lecturer II (2014), Lecturer I (2018), and Senior Lecturer (2021)

- Taught the following courses: machine learning, python programming, computer vision, reinforcement learning, deep learning, website development, control engineering, and research methodology

- Led the team that designed and revised the programming and artificial intelligence curriculum at the Department of Computer Engineering

- Supervised +10 students working on computer vision, reinforcement learning on robotics, and classical control application projects

- Authored +13 articles (+12 journal articles, and +1 conference proceeding article)

- Held the following administrative roles: postgraduate examination officer, timetable officer, and course allocation officer

- Attend enrichment seminars, conferences, and workshops to stay abreast of the latest innovations in computer engineering and artificial intelligence

- The MIT Empowering the Teachers (MIT-ETT) fellowship is a teaching focused program at MIT strives to foster innovation in science and engineering education in tertiary academic institutions in Africa through an intense engagement with faculty members from African universities. NNPC and Total Energies are the corporate partners and sponsors of this program.

- Acquired multifaceted teaching skills that empower the fellows to create an active learning, inclusive learning environment, and hands-on learning activities that promote critical thinking and life-long problem solving skills

- Redesigned a course and learned evidence-based teaching philosophy that ensures the alignment of the learning objectives, instructional materials, and assessments

- Responsible for conducting computer vision and machine learning-based research
Implemented novel data augmentation algorithms and experimented using deep learning and classical computer vision for performing animal classification and localization

- Best paper award from the Journal of Information and Telecommunication (JIT), Taylor and Francis, in the year 2018

- Employee Researcher 4: responsible for developing machine learning models for predicting event codes from excavator machines during the MANTIS European Union consortium project

- Worked on collaborative projects related to plants, facial gender, and handwritten recognition tasks

- Co-supervised together with my Ph.D. Advisor three final-year B.Sc. projects involving the application of deep learning for solving computer vision tasks

- Authored 12 articles (1 book chapter, 1 journal article, and 10 conference proceeding articles)

Engaged in MIT Empowering the Teachers program focusing on fostering innovation in science and engineering education in tertiary academic institutions in Africa
Acquired multifaceted teaching skills to create an active learning, inclusive learning environment, and hands-on learning activities
Redesigned a course and learned evidence-based teaching philosophy

Taught courses including machine learning, python programming, computer vision, deep learning, website development, control engineering, and research methodology
Led the team that designed and revised the programming and artificial intelligence curriculum
Supervised 10 students working on various projects
Authored 13 articles - 12 journal articles and 1 conference proceeding article
Held administrative roles such as postgraduate examination officer, timetable officer, and course allocation officer
Attended enrichment seminars and workshops to stay updated on the latest innovations in computer engineering and artificial intelligence

Conducted computer vision and machine learning based research
Implemented novel data augmentation algorithms and experimented using deep learning and classical computer vision for performing animal classification and localization
Received Best Paper Award from Journal of Information and Telecommunication in 2018
Authored 12 articles - 1 book chapter, 1 journal article, and 10 conference proceeding articles
Worked on collaborative projects related to plant, facial gender, and handwritten recognition tasks