Visiting Professor of Computer Engineering
Affiliation: Visiting
Education: PhD University of Karlsruhe (TH)
Research Areas: Facial image processing; biometrics; computer vision; machine learning; deep learning
Hazım Kemal Ekenel is a visiting professor from ITU Department of Computer Engineering, where he leads the Smart Interaction and Machine Intelligence Technologies (SiMiT) Lab. His aim is to leverage computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning techniques to build interactive and intelligent systems that ease people's lives and enhance their social interactions. He also focuses on assistive technologies for people with disabilities and healthcare applications.
Ekenel has over twenty years of experience in computer vision and machine learning with a focus on face analysis and human perception. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious international journals, conferences, and workshops in related fields, which have received over 6000 citations.
His research achievements have been recognized by several national and international foundations. Ekenel received the IEEE Research Award in 2019, the Parlar Foundation Research Award, and the Outstanding Young Scientist (BAGEP) Award from the Science Academy, Turkiye in 2018. In 2008, Ekenel received the EBF European Biometric Research Award for his contributions to the field of face recognition during his doctoral studies and, with his team, the Best Demo Award at the IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition.