Yunus Emre KARA

Summary

I am a multidisciplinary, versatile researcher and developer with both academic and industrial experience. I have been actively involved in computer vision and machine learning since 2008. My masters thesis focused on keypoint tracking based human action recognition and my PhD thesis focused on Bayesian approaches to crowd-sourced label collection problem. I am also keen on using my background on mathematics in research problems. I am proficient in a multitude of programming languages and can quickly adapt to new languages as well.

Research Interests

Computer Vision
Image Processing
Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Bayesian Methods
Statistical Modeling
Action Recognition
Pose Estimation
Crowd-labeling and Annotator Modeling

Experience

Ottoman Digitalization Framework

Machine Learning Researcher and Developer, Ottoman Transliteration Project

2018 -

Transliteration of Ottoman script to modern Latin-script based Turkish. Part of the end-to-end framework for digitalization of Ottoman era documents.

Computer Vision Researcher and Developer, Ottoman OCR Project

2012 -

Research and development of a high accuracy and fast OCR application from scratch. Developed for IRCICA Library for the digitalization of Ottoman era documents written in cursive Ottoman Turkish script (abandoned a century ago). The documents consist of books, journals, periodicals, and handwritten manuscripts dating back to the 14th century. The project is developed in C++ and it is the first of its kind.
Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey

R&D Technical Lead, Urban Security Management Systems Project

2016 - 2019

A joint government project with ASELSAN A.S. and Hacettepe University, developed for the General Directorate of Security of Turkey. Our team was responsible for the research and development of traffic analysis (vehicle tracking, traffic density, trespassing, etc.) and object analysis (detection and tracking of suspicious or lost objects, etc.) parts of the project. The system will work in real-time on 1000 urban security surveillance cameras in Ankara. My responsibilities include devising computer vision solutions that can work on limited processing power of the embedded system in real-time; overseeing the code integration to the mainframe; and scientific reporting of the research and development process.
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey

Lead researcher, Crowd-Labeling and Annotator Modeling

2012 - 2018

The concept of the wisdom of the crowds was applied to the problem of continuous-valued ground truth label collection. The aim of the project was to deduce robust crowd consensus along with individual annotator behaviors. As part of my PhD dissertation studies, I proposed Bayesian models that enable budget friendly and high quality label collection in an online manner. The label assessment system was developed in C++ using Eigen library. Two journal papers in JAIR (SCI) and Neurocomputing (SCI-E) were published.

Researcher, Molecular Communications

2015 - 2018

Worked on mathematical analysis and statistical modeling of particle based molecular communication scenarios. Developed a simulator using CUDA for nanoparticle diffusion in liquid medium. Two journal papers in CommLetters (SCI) and NanoComNet (SCI-E) were published.

Researcher, Real-time 3D Hand Pose Estimation and Classification

2011 - 2014

Research and development of a Kinect camera based real-time 3D hand pose estimation and hand shape classification application. The method is based on classification of depth pixels using Random Decision and Regression Forests. The project was developed in C++ using Qt, OpenCV, OpenNI, and Kinect SDK. Published one journal paper, one book chapter, 2 national and 3 international conference/workshop papers (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV).

Lead researcher, Human Action Recognition

2008 - 2012

This research was the focus of my masters studies. I developed a real-time keypoint tracking system using C++ and OpenCV. Video segments were classified using the tracked keypoint trajectories for recognizing the action of the subject. The work was part of the "Gesture Based HCI in Emergency Management Systems" project. In addition, I developed computer vision-based fall detection part of the "Multimodal Wireless Sensor Networks for Elderly Care" project. 3 conference papers were published.

Teaching Assistant, CmpE537: Computer Vision

Fall 2013

A graduate level course focused on binary operations; edge detection; segmentation; feature extraction; object recognition; motion and tracking.

Teaching Assistant, CmpE464: Image Processing for Computer Graphics

Fall 2009

Undergraduate senior elective focused on color quantization; signal theory; convolution, linear and nonlinear filters; sampling and reconstruction; edge detection; image compression; warping and morphing.
Idiap Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland

Visiting Researcher

Summer 2012

Participated in the "Multimodal Computational Modeling of Nonverbal Social Behavior in Face to Face Interaction" project. Preliminary research was conducted on continuous-valued ground truth label estimation using crowd-sourced personality trait annotations from videos under the supervision of Dr. Oya Aran.
Sigma Research and Development, Istanbul, Turkey

Computer Vision Engineer

2012

Developed an augmented reality application for an interactive medical assistance system. Also, developed a pillow recommendation tool that makes use of the user's upper body structure. Both projects were developed in C++ using data from a depth camera.
CC Software and Consultancy, Istanbul, Turkey

Software Developer

2010

Back-end and front-end development for a gift card processing system, including POS terminal software, gift card printing back-end software, database design and web applications.

Education

PhD

Computer Engineering, Bogazici University
Thesis: "Crowd Labeling for Continuous Valued Annotations" (slides), supervised by Lale Akarun

2018

Computer Engineering, Bogazici University
Thesis: "Computer Vision-Based Human Action Recognition via Keypoint Tracking" (slides), supervised by Lale Akarun

2011

Mathematics, Bogazici University
Senior Project: "Dynamical Systems Techniques Applied to Number Theory" (slides), supervised by Burak Gurel

2008

Skills

Languages: Turkish (Native Language), English (Full professional proficiency)
Programming Languages: Actively developing in C, C++, Python, MATLAB, CMake; Experience in R, Java, Pascal, Various BASIC dialects, Prolog
Libraries and APIs: Actively using OpenCV, Qt, Boost, Eigen, OpenMP, Intel TBB, CUDA, PyTorch; Experience in Ogre, OpenNI, Kinect SDK, wxWidgets, OpenGL, OpenCL
Web Development: Experience in ASP, PHP, HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, SQL
Database: Experience in MSSQL, PostgreSQL, MYSQL, Access

Publications

Crowd-Labeling and Annotator Modeling

PhD
- Kara, Yunus Emre
(2018). Crowd Labeling For Continuous Valued Annotations, PhD Thesis, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Code

Slides
J5
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Genc, Gaye
- Aran, Oya
- Akarun, Lale
(2018). Actively Estimating Crowd Annotation Consensus, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 61, 363-405.
Code

Data
J2
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Genc, Gaye
- Aran, Oya
- Akarun, Lale
(2015). Modeling annotator behaviors for crowd labeling, Neurocomputing, 160, 141-156.
Code

Data

Molecular Communications

J4
- Genc, Gaye
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Tugcu, Tuna
- Pusane, Ali Emre
(2018). Reception modeling of sphere-to-sphere molecular communication via diffusion, Nano Communication Networks, 16, 69-80.
J3
- Genc, Gaye
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Yilmaz, Huseyin Birkan
- Tugcu, Tuna
(2016). ISI-Aware Modeling and Achievable Rate Analysis of the Diffusion Channel, IEEE Communications Letters, 20, 1729-1732.

Matrix/Tensor Factorization

C9
- Simsekli, Umut
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Özgür, Arzucan
- Cemgil, Ali Taylan
(2012). Probabilistic Latent Tensor Factorization for 3-way Microarray Data Analysis with Missing Values, In Proceedings of Machine Learning in Computational Biology Workshop (MLCB) in Neural Information Processing Systems Conference (NeurIPS), Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA, 2012.

Real-time 3D Hand Pose Estimation and Hand Shape Classification

J1
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2014). Hierarchically constrained 3D hand pose estimation using regression forests from single frame depth data, Pattern Recognition Letters, 50, 91-100.
B1
- Keskin, Cem
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2013). Real Time Hand Pose Estimation Using Depth Sensors, In Consumer Depth Cameras for Computer Vision, Research Topics and Applications, 119.
C8
- Keskin, Cem
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2012). Hand Pose Estimation and Hand Shape Classification Using Multi-layered Randomized Decision Forests, In Proceedings of Computer Vision - ECCV 2012 - 12th European Conference on Computer Vision, Florence, Italy, October 7-13, 2012, Proceedings, Part VI (pp. 852-863).
C7
- Keskin, Cem
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2012). Randomized decision forests for static and dynamic hand shape classification, In Proceedings of 2012 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, Providence, RI, USA, June 16-21, 2012 (pp. 31-36).
C6
- Keskin, Cem
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2012). 3D hand pose estimation and classification using depth sensors, In Proceedings of 20th Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference, SIU 2012, Mugla, Turkey, April 18-20, 2012 (pp. 1-4). Turkish Winner of the Best Paper Award
C5
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Keskin, Cem
- Akarun, Lale
(2012). Depth image based 3D hand pose estimation framework, In Proceedings of 20th Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference, SIU 2012, Mugla, Turkey, April 18-20, 2012 (pp. 1-2). Turkish Best Demo Award, 3rd place
C4
- Keskin, Cem
- Kirac, Furkan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2011). Real time hand pose estimation using depth sensors, In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops, ICCV 2011 Workshops, Barcelona, Spain, November 6-13, 2011 (pp. 1228-1234).

Human Action Recognition

MS
- Kara, Yunus Emre
(2011). Computer Vision-Based Human Action Recognition via Keypoint Tracking, Masters Thesis, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Slides
C3
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Akarun, Lale
(2011). Human action recognition in videos using keypoint tracking, In Proceedings of 2011 IEEE 19th Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (pp. 1129-1132). Turkish
C2
- Alemdar, Hande Özgür
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Özen, Mustafa Ozan
- Yavuz, Gökhan Remzi
- Incel, Özlem Durmaz
- Akarun, Lale
- Ersoy, Cem
(2010). A robust multimodal fall detection method for ambient assisted living applications, In Proceedings of 2010 IEEE 18th Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (pp. 204-207). Turkish
C1
- Alemdar, Hande Özgür
- Yavuz, Gökhan Remzi
- Özen, Mustafa Ozan
- Kara, Yunus Emre
- Incel, Özlem Durmaz
- Akarun, Lale
- Ersoy, Cem
(2010). Multi-modal fall detection within the WeCare framework, In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, IPSN 2010, April 12-16, 2010, Stockholm, Sweden (pp. 436-437).