College of Aeronautical Engineering
Researches MIG (Machine Intelligence Group)

MIG (Machine Intelligence Group)

Core Competencies:

  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Deep Reinforcement Learning
  • Adversarial AI

Description:

The MIG research group focuses on advancing technologies at the intersection of vision, language, and intelligence. The group’s research explores cutting-edge developments in computer vision, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence to tackle challenges such as automated video captioning, reinforcement learning, and adversarial AI. With a strong emphasis on real-world applications, VISIA contributes to fields such as autonomous systems, AI-driven simulations, and medical image processing.

Group Members:

  1. Raja Farrukh Ali (PI: Principal Investigator)
  2. Ijaz Khan (Co-PI: Co-Principal Investigator)
  3. Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi
  4. Salah ud Din
  5. Fazal
  6. Salman

Ancillary Members

  1. Nayyer Aafaq
  2. Ammar Saleem
  3. Farrukh Pervez

Members Profile:

  1. Nayyer Aafaq: Aafaq specializes in deep learning, particularly in computer vision and natural language processing (NLP). His research contributions include video captioning, visual question answering, and visual dialog systems.
  2. Ijaz Khan: Ijaz Khan completed a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) in 2019. His research focuses on AI applications in medical image processing and computational pathology, including human behavior analysis through computer vision and decision-support systems. He has collaborated with forensic anthropologists on human age-at-death estimation and worked on AI-driven automation projects in healthcare.
  3. Ammar Saleem. Ammar Saleem received the B.E. degree in Avionics engineering from the National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan, in 2007, M.Sc. degree in Avionics engineering from Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2013, and Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering from Sabanci University, Türkiye. His research interests include solving inverse problems, machine learning, radar signal processing, and communication resource management.
  4. Raja Farrukh Ali: Ali completed his PhD in Computer Science from Kansas State University, USA. He specializes in machine learning and reinforcement learning, applying these techniques to autonomous systems, avionics simulations, and virtual reality-based AI training systems.
  5. Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi: Kazmi is a researcher specializing in adversarial artificial intelligence, AI/ML integration, and optimization for computer vision tasks. His expertise extends to large language models and retrieval-augmented generation, with a focus on enhancing model robustness, efficiency, and real-world applicability.
  6. Farrukh Pervez: Pervez received his MS degree in Electrical Engineering from School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan, in 2018. He is currently serving as Assistant Professor at the College of Aeronautical Engineering, NUST. His research interests include Artificial Intelligence (AI), wireless communication, federated learning, and reinforcement learning.
  7. Salah ud Din: Salah works on computer vision and adversarial AI, emphasizing the development of robust deep learning algorithms for control systems and industrial automation.

Publications

  1. Tahira Anwar Lashari, Rimsha Fayyaz, Ijaz Khan, Sidra sultana, and Tashfa Afzal ‘A game-based web tool to assess motivation, engagement, fun and learning outcome among engineers’, Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 2023, Volume32, Issue2.
  2. Saira Iftikhar, Virdah Farooq, Tahira Anwar Lashari, Ijaz Khan, Sana Anwar Lashari, Examining the Need for an Integrated Framework: Exploring the Intersection of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) in Entrepreneurship Competency Development, STEAM Education, and Gamification Journal: Journal of Xi’an Shiyou University, 2023
  3. Ijaz Khan, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Faridah Mhod Nor, Age regression for Malaysian males using cortical bone histomorphometry, Journal of physics, Volume 1019, Issue 1, 27 June 2018, Article number 012011.
  4. Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Sex based histological comparison of Haversian canal in cortical bones of Malaysian citizens, journal of fundamental and applied sciences: Vol 10, No 6S (2018).
  5. Ijaz Khan, Hadi Abdullah, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Evaluation and reliability of bone histological age estimation methods: journal of fundamental and applied sciences, Vol 9, No 4S (2017).
  6. Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Ijaz Khan, Hadi Abdullah, Efficient Drowsiness Detection by Facial Features Monitoring: Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 7(11): 2376-2380, 20 march, 2014
  7. Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Improved UWB Wireless Sensor Network Algorithm for Human Intruder Localization: Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 7(12): 2524-2528, 29 march 2014.
  8. Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Low cost Ultra-Wide Band hybrid radar design using virtual reference tags as road safety feature in vehicles: Journal of Information and Communication Technologies, ISSN 2047-3168, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013.
  9. Ijaz Khan, Hadi Abdullah, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, A Robust Hybrid Design for Driver Fatigue Detection: Journal of Information and Communication Technologies, ISSN 2047-3168, Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2013.
  10. Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Clutter removal technique using virtual reference tags for intruder localization ultra wide band radar network: International Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 3, May 2013
  11. Ijaz Khan, Hadi Abdullah, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Efficient eyes and mouth detection algorithm using combination of viola jones and skin colour pixel detection: International Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Vol. 3, No. 4, June 2013.
  12. Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Ultra-Wide Band localization and tracking hybrid technique using VRTs: International Journal of Integrated Engineering, UTHM, Vol.4 No. 3 (2012).
  13. Kazmi, Syed M. Kazam Abbas, Nayyer Aafaq, Mansoor Ahmed Khan, Mohsin Khalil, and Ammar Saleem. “From Pixel to Peril: Investigating Adversarial Attacks on Aerial Imagery Through Comprehensive Review and Prospective Trajectories.” IEEE Access 11 (2023): 81256-81278.
  14. Ali, Raja Farrukh. “Non-exponential reward discounting in reinforcement learning.” Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 37. No. 13. 2023.
  15. Nafi, Nasik Muhammad, Ali, Raja Farrukh, Hsu, William, Kevin Duong, and Mason Vick. “Policy optimization using horizon regularized advantage to improve generalization in reinforcement learning.” In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), pp. 1427-1435. 2024.
  16. Ali, Raja Farrukh, Kevin Duong, Nasik Muhammad Nafi, and William Hsu. “Multi-horizon learning in procedurally-generated environments for off-policy reinforcement learning.” In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 37, no. 13, pp. 16150-16151. 2023.
  17. Nafi, Nasik Muhammad, Raja Farrukh Ali, and William Hsu. “Analyzing the sensitivity to policy-value decoupling in deep reinforcement learning generalization.” In 2024 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), pp. 1-8. IEEE, 2024.
  18. Ali, Raja Farrukh, Stephanie Milani, John Woods, Emmanuel Adenij, Ayesha Farooq, Clayton Mansel, Jeffrey Burns, and William Hsu. “Unifying Interpretability and Explainability for Alzheimer’s Disease Progression Prediction.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.07777(2024).
  19. Nafi, Nasik Muhammad, Raja Farrukh Ali, and William Hsu. “Hyperbolically discounted advantage estimation for generalization in reinforcement learning.” In Decision Awareness in Reinforcement Learning Workshop at ICML 2022. 2022.
  20. Ali, Raja Farrukh, John Woods, Robert A. Southern, Travis Smith, Vahid Behzadan, and William Hsu. “Generalized Hyperbolic Discounting for Delay-Sensitive Reinforcement Learning.” In Finding the Frame: An RLC Workshop for Examining Conceptual Frameworks, 2024.
  21. Ali, Raja Farrukh, John Woods, Esmaeil Seraj, Kevin Duong, Vahid Behzadan, and William Hsu. “Hyperbolic Discounting in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning.” In Finding the Frame: An RLC Workshop for Examining Conceptual Frameworks, 2024
  22. Ijaz Khan, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Faridah Mhod Nor, Analysis of age-related changes in Haversian canal using image processing techniques: Proceedings- 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, ICCSCE 2016, 5 April 2017, Article number 7893565, Pages 169-172.
  23. Ijaz Khan, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Faridah Mhod Nor, Automated human age estimation at death via bone microstructures: Proceedings- 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, ICCSCE 2016, 5 April 2017, Article number 7893642, Pages 580-583.
  24. Ijaz Khan, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Faridah Mhod Nor, A survey of human age estimation techniques from bone microstructures: IFMBE Proceedings, Volume 56, 2016, Pages 203-207.
  25. Ijaz Khan, Hadi Abdullah, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Vision based composite approach for lethargy detection: IEEE 10th International Colloquium on Signal Processing and its Applications, IEEE Xplore: 28 April 2014, Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4799-3091-3.
  26. Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Improved range estimation method in WSN for human intruder localization: IEEE 10th International Colloquium on Signal Processing and its Applications, IEEE Xplore: 28 April 2014, Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4799-3091-3.
  27. Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Proposed Wireless sensor network in vehicles for road surveillance: 2013 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process & Control, IEEE Xplore: 10 February 2014, Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4799-2209-3.
  28. Mohd Shamian Bin Zainal, Hadi Abdullah, Ijaz Khan, Improved RSSI localization algorithm with virtual reference tags: Prosiding Seminar Kebangsaan Aplikasi Sains dan Matematik 2013 (SKASM 2013), Malaysia, 29-30 October 2013.
  29. Shahid, M. Farhan, Nayyer Aafaq, Syed Khurram Mahmud, And Syed M. Kazam Abbas Kazmi. “Influence Of Various Ml-based Binary Classifiers On The Performance On Handwritten Digit Recognition.” In 2023 10th International Conference On Future Internet Of Things And Cloud (Ficloud), Pp. 283-291. IEEE, 2023.
  30. Kazmi, Syed M. Kazam Abbas, Nayyer Aafaq, Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Ammar Saleem, and Zahid Ali. “Adversarial attacks on aerial imagery: The state-of-the-art and perspective.” In 2023 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI), pp. 95-102. IEEE, 2023.
  31. Kazmi, Syed M. Kazam Abbas, Nayyer Aafaq, Mansoor Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Ameer Hamza, and Syed Khurram Mahmud. 2024. “Deceiving Airborne Object Detectors Using Adversarial AI.” In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Aeronautical Sciences, Engineering and Technology, 227–234. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
  32. Hadi Abdullah, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, Ijaz Khan, Faridah Mohd Nor and Mohd Helmy Bin Abd Wahab “Automated human cortical bone Haversian canal Histomorphometric comparison system” Chapter 2, pages 25-67, Book title: Handbook of Data Science Approaches for Biomedical Engineering, 24 Jan 2020, ISBN 978-0-12-818318-2.
  33. Ijaz Khan, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil and Faridah Mohd Nor “Human age prediction at death via bone microstructures image processing” Chapter number 6, Book title: Biomedical engineering application: Cell engineering (2016), UTHM
  34. [1] Aafaq, A. Mian, W. Liu, S. Z. Gilani, and M. Shah, “Video description: A survey of methods, datasets, and evaluation metrics,” ACM Computing Surveys (ACM CSUR), vol. 52, no. 6, p. 115.
  35. Aafaq, N. Akhtar, W. Liu, and A. Mian, “Empirical autopsy of deep video captioning encoder decoder architecture,” Elsevier Array, vol. 9, p. 100052, 2021.
  36. Aafaq, A. Mian, W. Liu, N. Akhtar, and M. Shah, “Cross-Domain Modality Fusion for Dense Video Captioning,” Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (IEEE TAI), 2021. (https://doi.org/10.1109/TAI.2021.3134190)
  37. Aafaq, A. Mian, N. Akhtar, W. Liu, and M. Shah, “Dense Video Captioning with Early Linguistic Information Fusion,” Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (IEEE TMM), 2021. (https://doi.org/10.1109/TMM.2022.3146005)
  38. Aafaq,  N.  Akhtar,  W.  Liu,  M.  Shah,  and  A.  Mian,  “Language  Model  Agnostic  Gray-Box Adversarial Attack on Image Captioning,” IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (IEEE TIFS), 2022.
  39. Kazmi, N. Aafaq, M. Khan, M. Khalil, A. Saleem. “From Pixel to Peril: Investigating Adversarial Attacks on Aerial Imagery Through Comprehensive Review and Prospective Trajectories”, IEEE Access, 2023.
  40. Farooq, M. Muaz, K. Jadoon, N. Aafaq, MKA Khan. “An Improved YOLOv8 for Foreign Object Debris Detection with Optimized Architecture for Small Objects”. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2024.
  41. [8] Aafaq, N. Akhtar, W. Liu, S. Z. Gilani, and A. Mian, “Spatio-temporal dynamics and semantic attribute enriched visual encoding for video captioning,” in Proceedings of IEEE CVPR, 2019.
  42. M. Malakan and N. Aafaq and G. M. Hassan and A. Mian, “Contextualise, Attend, Modulate and Tell: Visual Storytelling,” In 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications VISIGRAPP), 2021.
  43. M. Malakan and G. M. Hassan and A. Jalwana and N. Aafaq and A. Mian, “Semantic Attribute Enriched Storytelling from a Sequence of Images,” In IEEE Digital Image Computing Techniques and Applications (IEEE DICTA), 2021.
  44. Aafaq, U. Qamar, SA Khan, ZH Khan. “Multi-Speaker Diarization using Long-Short Term Memory Network”. 3rd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IEEE ICAI), 2023.
  45. SMKA Kazmi, Aafaq, Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Ammar Saleem, Zahid Ali. “Adversarial Attacks on Aerial Imagery : The State-of-the-Art and Perspective”. 3rd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IEEE ICAI), 2023.
  46. Aafaq, M. Saleem, J. Khan, I. Abbasi. “Convolutional Neural Networks for Deep Spoken Keyword Spotting”. 3rd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IEEE ICAI), 2023.
  47. Farooq, S. Fatima, N. Aafaq. “Synthetic Randomized Image Augmentation (SRIA) to Address Class Imbalance Problem”. 3rd IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (IEEE ICCIT), 2023.
  48. Akbar, F. Khalid, A. Saleem, N. Aafaq. “Recent Advances in Deepfake Detection- A Survey”. 8th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Communication Systems (IEEE ICCCS), Guangzhou, China, 2023.
  49. Aafaq, N. Akhtar, W. Liu, and A. Mian, “Empirical autopsy of deep video captioning framework,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.09345.
  50. Aafaq, N. Akhtar, W. Liu, M. Shah, and A. Mian. “Controlled Caption Generation for Images Through Adversarial Attacks”. arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.03050.

PG / UG Student Members (last 03 years)

  1. Jahanzeb Tariq Khan (PhD, CAE)
  2. Zainab Rehman (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  3. Saim Bajwa (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  4. Jameel Ahmed (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  5. Javaria Farooq (MS Avionics Engg, CAE)
  6. SM Kazam Abbas Kazmi (MS Avionics Engg, CAE)
  7. Sundas Fatima (MS Avionics Engg, CAE)
  8. Mahnoor Malik Goraya (MS Avionics Engg, CAE)
  9. Qamar Ijaz (MS Avionics Engg, CAE)
  10. Umer Zahid (MS Electrical Engg, CAE)
  11. Abdul Moiz (BE Avionics Engineering, CAE)
  12. Umer Bin Amjad (BE Avionics Engineering, CAE)
  13. Umair Mubasher (BE Avionics Engineering, CAE)
  14. Ahmed Iftikhar (BE Avionics Engineering, CAE)
  15. Ahmed Bilal
  16. Imran Raza
  17. Asmat Amin
  18. Ibad Abdullah
  19. Talha Tanveer
  20. Muhammad Hamza
  21. Mehran Saleem
  22. Usama Qamar
  23. Waleed Arshad
  24. Ali Tahir
  25. Frass Iqbal
  26. Huzaifah Salah Uddin
  27. Abdullah Nawaz
  28. Abd Us Sammi Ozam
  29. Abdullah Farooq
  30. M Saim Nasir Khan
  31. M Imaad Asif
  32. Mahad Arif
  33. Saad Ikram
  34. Ali Mustafa

Projects / Thesis (Completed + Ongoing)

  1. Thesis: AI and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Control, Student: Jameel Ahmed, Advisor: Dr Raja Farrukh Ali, Status: Active
  2. Thesis: Multimodal Learning for Vision and Language Navigation, Student: Jahanzeb Tariq Khan, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Active
  3. Thesis: Foreign Objects Debris (FOD) Detection using Deep Learning, Student: Javaria Farooq, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Completed
  4. Thesis: Development of Adversarial Attack against Aerial Imaging Object Detectors, Student: SM Kazam Abbas, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Completed
  5. Thesis: Resilient Architectures to Counter Adversarial Attacks on Neural Networks, Student: Sundas Fatima, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Active
  6. Thesis: Sign Language Recognition and Translation into Natural Language, Student: Mahnoor Malik Goraya, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Active
  7. Thesis: Gray-Box Adversarial Patch Optimization for Aerial Imagery Object Detection Models, Student: Umer Zahid, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Active
  8. Thesis: Over-the-Air Deep Learning based Radio Signal Classification using Deep Learning, Student: Qamar Ijaz, Advisor: Dr Nayyer Aafaq, Status: Active
  9. Project: Development of Large Language Model (LLM) based Coding Assistant, Student: Abdul Moiz, Advisor: Dr Raja Farrukh Ali, Status: Active
  10. Project: Development of Modelling & Simulation Framework for AI driven Autonomous Flying (AIMS), Student: Umer Bin Amjad, Advisor: Dr Raja Farrukh Ali, Status: Active
  11. Project: Intelligent Document Interaction using AI and Open-Source Language Models, Student: Umair Mubasher, Advisor: Dr Raja Farrukh Ali, Status: Active
  12. Project: Jamming Classification using One-Shot Federated Learning. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Completed, 2024
  13. Project: Commercial Drone Classification algorithm development for DJI and non DJI drones. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Active
  14. Project: Artificial Intelligence Based Scene Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Completed, 2023
  15. Project: Deep Learning Based Image Segmentation. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Completed, 2023
  16. Project: Deep learning techniques for generation of stenographic images with hidden text Messages. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Completed, 2025
  17. Project: A Real-Time Heart patient vitals Monitoring System. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Completed, 2025
  18. Project: AI-Powered Recruitment Platform for Automated screening and Interviewing. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Active
  19. Project: Automated Mental Stress Detection System Using ECG Signals. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Active
  20. Project: Automated Lecture Note Generation. Supervisor Dr. Ijaz Khan. Status: Active
  21. Project: AI-Enabled Real-time Weapon Detection using CCTV Live Feed. Supervisor Engr Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi. Status: Completed, 2024
  22. AI-Based Real Time Traffic Monitoring System (Phase-1). Supervisor: Engr Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi. Status: Completed, 2025
  23. AI-Based Real Time Traffic Monitoring System (Phase-II). Supervisor: Engr Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi. Status: Completed, 2025
  24. AI Based Realtime audio / video speech to text conversion (Project VoxText), Supervisor: Engr Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi. Status: Active

Funding

  1. Perturbations for Machine Vision Disruption – 3.92 M PKR (Granted)

Collaboration (Academia / Industry)

  1. Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute (GIKI)
  2. Air University

Equipment & Resources

  1. High End Workstations with GPUs
  2. Data Capturing Stations
  3. Drones (DJI / Custom Build with enhanced payload capacity)
  4. Machine Vision Cameras / Lenses
  5. Night Vision Sensor

Recent Researches