Director: Alper Yilmaz, PhD
LinkedIn Profile, Vitae, Google Scholar
Dr. Yilmaz is a Professor of Geo-Informatics at The Ohio State University. He is a fellow of ASPRS, a senior member of IEEE, and a senior member of the US National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Yilmaz is president of the ISPRS Technical Commission II on Photogrammetry and serves as the Editor-In-Chief for the Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing Journal. He served as Associate Editor for the Computer Vision and Image Understanding Journal between 2014 and 2016 and the Machine Vision and Applications Journal between 2006 and 2011.
Based on a recent study from Stanford University and Elsevier (published on October 4, 2023), Dr. Yilmaz is listed among the top 1% most cited researchers in the fields of “Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing” and “Geological & Geomatics Engineering.” The ranking covers 22 majors and 176 submajors.
Dr. Yilmaz’s research focuses on biomimetic navigation systems for unmanned systems, mining anomalies in multi-physics and multi-dimensional data for surveillance, and learning geospatial information for scene understanding. He has organized many Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, and Computer Vision conferences. Dr. Yilmaz’s research has received over $13M in extramural funding from NASA, NSF, DOD, DOE, NIH, and industry, resulting in over 200 publications and patents that received ~14,500 citations (according to Google Scholar).
Dr. Yilmaz was awarded the Outstanding Service Award in 2022 by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, the Innovator of Year (OSU) – annually given only to one faculty across the university – in 2020, Presidential citation in 2019 from the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, honorable mention for the Masao Horiba Award (Japan) in 2016, the Lumley Interdisciplinary Research Award (OSU) in 2015, and the Lumley Research Award (OSU) in 2012. He has advised 24 Ph.D. and 15 M.Sc. students to completion on topics ranging from photogrammetry, machine learning, and computer vision who have found positions in prominent academic institutions, industry, and the government.
Current Members
| Name (ordered by seniority) | Degree Sought | Contact |
| Michael Karnes (CEG) | PhD | karnes.30@osu.edu |
| Gulcin Sarici Turkmen (MAE) (co-advised) | PhD | sariciturkmen.1@osu.edu |
| Shehan Perera (ECE) | PhD | perera.27@osu.edu |
| Yuci Han (ECE) | PhD | han.1489@osu.edu |
| Pouyan Boreshnavard (CEG) | PhD | boreshnavard.1@osu.edu |
| Alexys Rodriguez Avellaneda (CEG) (co-advised) | PhD | rodriguezavellaneda.1@osu.edu |
| Jiyong Kwag (CEG) (co-advised) | PhD | kwag.3@osu.edu |
| Yunus Talha Erzurumlu (ECE) | PhD | erzurumlu.1@osu.edu |
| Gokce A. Inal (CEG) | PhD | inal.5@osu.edu |
| Luming Yang (ECE) | PhD | yang.7670@osu.edu |
| Yasemin Ozkut (ECE) | MSc | ozkut.1@osu.edu |
| Ramazan Dogan (KTU) | Visiting Scholar | dogan@trabzon.edu.tr |
| Hulya Dogan (KTU) | Visiting Scholar | hulya@ktu.edu.tr |
| Henry Redder (CSE) | B.Sc. | redder.11@osu.edu |
| Kaizhi Yang (CSE) | B.Sc. | yang.6196@osu.edu |
Alumni
| Name (LinkedIn) | Degree, Year | Dissertation title |
| Eve Myadze-Pike | BSc 2024 | Identifying At-Risk Populations: Incorporating Social Vulnerability Indicators into Wildfire Risk Management Using Machine Learning |
| Jianli Wei | PhD 2023 | Enabling Platform Agnostic Situational Awareness using Machine Learning and View Geometry |
| David Novikov | BSc 2023 | Geopositioning ground objects in UAS imagery |
| Yongsheng (Mike) Bai | PhD 2022 | Deep Learning with Vision-based Technologies for Structural Damage Detection and Health Monitoring |
| Bing Zha | PhD 2021 | Map-Based Trajectory Learning for Geolocalization Using Deep Learning |
| Yuci Han | MS 2020 | Visual Navigation with UAV Using Deep Reinforcement Learning |
| Shehan Perera | MS 2020 | Automated Intracranial Hemorrhage and Subtype Detection |
| Muhammed (Taha) Koroglu | PhD 2019 | Multiple Hypothesis Testing Approach to Pedestrian Inertial Navigation with Non-recursive Bayesian Map-matching |
| Nima Ajam Gard | PhD 2019 | Human Contour Detection and Tracking: A Geometric Deep Learning Approach |
| Ji Hyun Lee | PhD 2018 | Development of a Tool to Assist the Nuclear Power Plant Operator in Declaring a State of Emergency Based on the Use of Dynamic Event Trees and Deep Learning Tools |
| Yujia Zhang | PhD 2018 | A Structured-Light Based 3D Reconstruction Using Combined Circular Phase Shifting Patterns |
| Oliver Nina | PhD 2018 | MTLE: A Multitask Learning Encoder-N-Decoder Framework for Temporal-Visual Features for Movie and Video Descriptions |
| Changlin Xiao | PhD 2017 | Visual Tracking with an Application to Augmented Reality |
| Sagar Deshpande | PhD 2017 | Semi-automated methods to create a hydro-flattened DEM using Single Photon and Linear Mode LiDAR |
| Ashish Gupta | PostDoc 2017 | – |
| Sai Luo | MS 2017 | Semantic Movie Scene Segmentation Using Bag-of-Words Representation |
| Abdullah Alanazi | MS 2017 | Evaluation of the accuracy of GIS data acquired from OpenStreetMaps by comparing it against ISPRS benchmark data |
| Yuchen Lai | MS 2017 | Augmented Reality Visualization of Building Information Models |
| Siavash HosseinyAlamdary | PhD 2016 | Traffic Scene Perception Using Multiple Sensors for Vehicular Safety Purposes |
| Adam Mattmuller | MS 2016 | Nuclear Power Plant Maintenance Improvements Via Implementation of Wearable Technology |
| Anuchit Sukcharoenpong | PhD 2015 | Shoreline Mapping with Integrated HSI-DEM using Active Contour Method |
| Ding Li | PhD 2015 | ESA ExoMars PanCam Vision System Geometric Modeling and Evaluation |
| Daniya Zamalieva | PhD 2014 | Transformational Models for Background Subtraction in Moving Cameras |
| Young Jin Lee | PhD 2014 | Real-Time Object Motion and 3D Localization From Geometry |
| Andrew Kerns | MS 2014 | – |
| Bernard Abayowa | PhD 2013 | Automatic Registration of Optical Aerial Imagery to a LIDAR Point Cloud for Generation of Large Scale City Models |
| Heewon Lee | PhD 2013 | Exploiting the dichromatic reflection model of an imaged object |
| Mohammed Al-Shahri | PhD 2013 | Line Matching in a Wide-Baseline Stereo-View |
| Kyoungjin Park | PhD 2013 | Generating Thematic Maps From Hyperspectral Images Using A Bag-of-Materials Model |
| Jordan Lawver | MS 2013 | Robust Feature Tracking in Image Sequences Using View Geometric Constraints |
| Jinwei Jiang | PhD 2012 | Collaborative Tracking of Image Features Based on Projective Invariance |
| Panu Srestasathiern | PhD 2012 | Line-Based Estimation of Object Space Geometry and Camera Motion |
| Kashyap Maduri | MS 2012 | – |
| Gabor Barsai | PhD 2011 | Data registration without explicit correspondence for estimating camera orientation parameters |
| Diego Mandelli | PhD 2011 | Scenario Clustering and Dynamic PRA |
| Vinod Khare | MS 2011 | Precise image registration and occlusion detection |
| Lei Ding | PhD 2010 | From pixels to people: graph-based methods for grouping problems in computer vision |
| Rhae-Sung Kim | MS 2010 | Spectral matching using bitmap indices of spectral derivatives for the analysis of hyperspectral imagery |
| Ryan (Polun) Lai | PhD 2010 | Shape recovery by exploiting planar topology in 3D projective space |
| Mustafa Ozendi | MS 2010 | Viewpoint-independent image classification and retrieval |
Visiting Scholars
| Name | Year |
| Kenan Menguc | 2023-24 |
| Serkan Zobar | 2022-23 |
| Yao Guobia | 2019-20 |
| Akif Durdu | 2019-20 |
| Mehmet Korkmaz | 2018-19 |
| Yatong Han | 2017-18 |
| Jie Wan | 2017-18 |
| Hu Junfeng | 2017-18 |
| Zhao Yafeng | 2017-19 |
| Xuhui Su | 2016-17 |
| Kemal Erdogan | 2016-17 |
| Meng Yi | 2016-17 |
| Shirui Li | 2016-17 |
| Mancheng Feng | 2015-16 |
| Zeshu Zhang | 2015-16 |
| Huan Chang | 2014-2015 |
| Feng Wang | 2014-15 |
| Prashast Bindal | 2014 |
| Weisen Pan | 2013 |
| Levent Ozparlak | 2012-2013 |
| Betul Ay | 2012-2013 |
| Haluk Eren | 2011-12 |
| Aliye Kayis | 2011-2012 |
| Jae-Soo Cho | 2009-10 |
| Kong-Hyun Yun | 2008-9 |