Dr Oktay Karakus

Biography

I am a Lecturer (analogous to Assistant Professor) in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at Cardiff University. I received my B.Sc. degree in electronics engineering (with Honours) from Istanbul Kültür University, Turkey in 2009. Then, I received my M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronics and communication engineering from the İzmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), Turkey, in 2012 and 2018, respectively. I have been awarded the 2020 IEEE Turkey Ph.D. Thesis Award.

Before joining Cardiff University, between 2018 and 2021, I was with the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Bristol as a Postdoctoral Research Associate.

 I have co-authored over 40 scientific publications and am a member of IEEE and IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Honours and awards

• 2020                PhD Thesis Award / the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Turkey Section
• 2017                International PhD Fellow / The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK)/Turkey
• 2012 – 2017     PhD Scholar / The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK)/Turkey
• 2012                Graduate Scholar / Turkcell Academy, Technology Leaders/Turkey
• 2009 – 2011     MSc Scholar / The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK)/Turkey
• 2009                Top student of the Department of Electronics Engineering / 3.80/4.00 GPA / Istanbul Kultur University / Turkey
• 2007 – 2009     High Honour Student / Istanbul Kultur University / Turkey

Professional memberships

• 2018 –             Member, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• 2018 –             Member, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) “Signal Processing Society”

Academic positions

• 2018 - 2021: Research Associate in Image Processing, University of Bristol
• 2012 - 2018: Research Assistant - Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), Turkey
• 2017 – 2017     Visiting Scholar - Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (ISTI)/The Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)/Pisa, Italy
• 2009 - 2012: Research Assistant - Yasar University, Turkey.

Committees and reviewing

• 2021 –              Editorial Board,            Digital Signal Processing: A Review Journal/Elsevier
• 2020 –             Reviewer,               Applied Ocean Research/Elsevier
• 2020 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Signal Processing/IEEE
• 2020 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Computational Imaging / IEEE
• 2020 –             Reviewer,               Remote Sensing of Environment / Elsevier
• 2019 –             Reviewer,               Neural Processing Letters /Springer
• 2019 –             Reviewer,               Remote Sensing / MDPI
• 2019 –             Reviewer,               Sensors / MDPI
• 2018 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Image Processing/IEEE
• 2018 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing/IEEE
• 2018 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Control Systems Technology /IEEE
• 2018 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Sustainable Energy / IEEE
• 2017 –             Reviewer,               Digital Signal Processing: A Review Journal/Elsevier
• 2017 –             Reviewer,               Transactions on Power Systems/IEEE

Teaching

I am the module lead for modules of:

• CMT309 - Computational Data Science
• CMT314 - Data Science Foundations
• CMT315 - Statistical Programming

My research area spans computer vision, engineering and applied statistics, and specifically is focused on Bayesian signal and image processing, statistical learning, inverse problems, object detection and tracking in images, convex/non-convex optimisation, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, and uncertainty quantification.

Even though coming from an electronics engineering background, up to date, I have conducted research on the statistical learning and inference approaches in detail and tried to apply my findings to various real-life measurements such as wind speed, earthquake acceleration, telecommunication system noise and channel modelling, as well as synthetically generated data sets.

I have also had the chance to work in the statistical computational imaging area during my time at the University of Bristol, which has equipped me with statistical image processing, remote sensing and probabilistic computational imaging algorithm development.

Supervision

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

• Remote Sensing Computational Imaging for Environmental Problems
• Statistical Computational Imaging
• Sport Analytics
• Bayesian Deep Learning
• Uncertainty Quantification for Images
• Irreversible Bayesian Sampling

If you are interested in working with me for your postgrad degree (MSc or PhD) you can directly connect with me via karakuso@cardiff.ac.uk

I have available self-funded PhD positions for now. Please see below:

1. Advancing Non-reversibility in Bayesian Networks for Time Series Prediction
2. Forest Health Index Maps via Remotely Sensed Information

I am also accepting Ph.D. students for application via the China Scholarship Council Ph.D. Scholarships.

Current Supervision

Ph.D. Co-Supervision

• Pengcheng Hao (UoB - 50%) - Target tracking in synthetic aperture radar video sequences - 11/2018 - ...
• Tianqi Yang (UoB - 30%) - Machine Learning for Lung Ultrasound Imagery Applications - 10/2020 - ...
• Wanli Ma (Cardiff - 80%) - Remote Sensing Image Fusion for Environmental Applications (ReSIF) - 10/2021 - ...
• Zien Ma (Cardiff - 40%) - Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy - 10/2021 - ...

• Jianqiao Weng (Cardiff - 40%) - Anomaly Detection - 10/2022 - ...

• Benjamin Wiriyapong (Cardiff - 60%) - Self-Learning Bayesian Networks via Imaging Uncertainties - 11/2022 - ...

Past projects

MSc Supervision

2022 Cohort

• Andrew Rowley
• Alessio Guera
• Ramez Qasim
• Henry Booth
• Teja Peruka
• Liquan Yin
• Thomas Devasia
• Mehmet Ali Gunay
• Tim Beckett
• Naga Padala
• Zak Ison
• James Hewitt
• Oliver Carter

2019-2020 Cohort

• Wanli Ma - Ship wake detection in SAR imagery using DT-CWT (awarded 09/2020)
• Tianqi Yang - Ship wake detection in SAR images of the sea surface (awarded 09/2019)
• Dongzhou Pan - SAR image despeckling (awarded 09/2019)