Research Funding
Inclusive use of Artificial Intelligence in Education in Vietnam: AI Powered Inclusive Education Digital Transformation in Rural and Urban Schools. Funded by the British Council (£99,135) [2024 – 2026]. PI.
STEM 4.0: Advancing Technology Education through AI-Driven and Adaptive Learning. Funded by the British Council (£29,374) [2025].
To Create an Innovative AI Approach for Enhancing Data Quality through Data Augmentation in the Finance Sector – Funded by Innovate UK (£235,710) [2024-2027]. Co-I.
Integrated Virtual Wards For Ageing Well – Funded by Innovate UK (£207,379) [2024-2026]. Co-I.
SmartBerry: Artificial Intelligence To Enhance Strawberry Farming In Developing Countries – Collaboration of Nottingham Trent University (UK), Covenant University (Nigeria) and Ashley’s Strawberry Farms (Nigeria). Funded by Innovate UK (£245,725) [2023-2025]. Co-I.
Turing Network Development Award – Contributions made towards a successful proposal for the development of a University-wide data science network, NTU-Turing. The application awarded £25,000 for networking events with the Alan Turing Institute. Award proposal led by Professor Eiman Kanjo and Professor Ahmad Lotfi, at Nottingham Trent University’s Department of Computer Science. Funded by the Alan Turing Institute (£25,000) [2022].
Achievements
2024
Grant Reviewer (International Expert) – AI Singapore.
Grant Reviewer – UKRI Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Press Coverage – Vietnam News Agency: “Expanding access to education through the application of AI in teaching in Vietnam” (translated from Vietnamese). https://vnanet.vn/vi/anh/anh-thoi-su-trong-nuoc-1014/mo-rong-tiep-can-giao-duc-thong-qua-ung-dung-ai-trong-day-hoc-o-viet-nam-7749029.html
Press Coverage – BaoTinTuc, Vietnam News Agency: “Four universities in Vietnam launch the latest AI application project in teaching” (translated from Vietnamese). https://baotintuc.vn/giao-duc/bon-truong-dai-hoc-o-viet-nam-khoi-dong-du-an-ung-dung-ai-moi-nhat-trong-day-hoc-20241210154236979.htm
Keynote Speaker – “Sustainability of Generative AI” delivered to NTU Strategic Partners. Nottingham Trent University, October 10th 2024.
Keynote Speaker – “ChatGPT: An Unsustainable Solution to Modern Problems” delivered at the Annual Dinner of the Friends of The School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University. City Campus, Nottingham Trent University.
Guest Lecture – “Demystifying AI: What Is It? How Does It Work?” jointly organised by Nottingham Trent University, BCS Nottingham and Derby branch and BCS Leicester branch, delivered by Prof. Ahmad Lotfi, Dr. Jordan J. Bird, Dr. Amir Pourabdollah, and Dr. Pedro Machado. Clifton Campus, Nottingham Trent University.
2023
Appointed as the Deputy Co-ordinator for B11 REF
Best Paper Award – UKCI 2023 – AI Generated Art: Latent Diffusion-based Style and Detection
Appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Nottingham Trent University.
Meeting and AI demonstrations (Human-Robot Interaction, Robotic Signature Forgery) with Lilian Greenwood, Labour MP for Nottingham South.
Enabling Technology talk and demonstration (Human-Robot Interaction with Sign Languages and Makaton) for faculty members from local special education schools.
AI demonstrations and talk delivered to high school students from Quarrydale Academy.
2022
Appointed as Lab Lead by the Head of Department – Nottingham Trent University’s Robotics Lab.
Interactive robotics demonstration for members of the East Midlands Chamber
Design and delivery of a robotic tour guide for Nottingham Trent University’s Open Day
Invited Reviewer for the IFRRIA workshop at ICRA 2022 (ICRA 2022 Worksop in Innovation in Forestry Robotics: Research and Industry Adoption)
Robotics demonstration for members of the elderly community towards a research collaboration between Nottingham Trent University and University of Derby
Organisation of the Human Behaviour Monitoring, Interpretation and Understanding workshop (NOTION) workshop at PETRA 2022. (Available here after the PETRA 2022 website goes offline)
2021
Joined the Computational Intelligence and Applications Research Group (CIA) at Nottingham Trent University as a Research Fellow. Nottingham, UK
Awarded the PhD in Computer Science. Thesis available here.
Designed teaching materials for Aston University’s MSc Artificial Intelligence module (tutorials on implementing Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Vehicles with TensorFlow and the CARLA Simulator)
Invited Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
2020
Invited Reviewer for MDPI Brain Sciences
Invited Reviewer for the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine
Invited Reviewer for IEEE RO-MAN 2020 – International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication
Invited Reviewer for Hindawi’s Journal of Sensors
Guest Reviewer for Springer’s Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing
Invited Reviewer for IEEE EDUCON2020
2019
Invited Speaker at BrumAI – Birmingham Artificial Intelligence Meetup
Invited Reviewer for Hindawi’s Journal of Sensors
Invited Reviewer for Elsevier’s Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering Journal
Invited Reviewer for The 3rd International Conference on Computer Science and Application Engineering (CSAE) 2019 Conference
Invited Reviewer for the IEEE Access Journal
Guest Reviewer for the PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) 2019 Conference
2018
Invited Guest Laboratory Session Lead for Final Year BSc. Computer Science Computational Intelligence – Neural Networks and Hyperheuristic Optimisation of Neural Networks
Robotics Demonstration for Think Beyond Data – SME Live 2018. The NEC, Birmingham, UK. (https://sme-live.co.uk/) (https://thinkbeyonddata.com/)
Robotics Demonstration – Brum Youth Trends 2018. Birmingham Town Hall, UK
Artificial Intelligence Q&A meeting with Andy Street, Lord Mayor of the West Midlands. Birmingham, UK
Laboratory session lead for Computer Graphics module. Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Delegate for Aston University and Robotics Demonstration – West Midlands Forum for Growth 2018. The NEC, Birmingham, UK. (https://www.westmidlandsforumforgrowth.co.uk)
Invited Speaker – HeadStart 2018. Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Robotics Demonstration – CompTIA 2018. Birmingham, UK
Awarded Scholarship to study for a PhD. in Computer Science supervised by Dr. Diego R. Faria and Dr. Anikó Ekárt at Aston University, Birmingham, UK
BSc. Dissertation peer-reviewed and published in Advances in Computational Intelligence Systems – https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-97982-3
External Activity
2024
PhD Guidance Committee Member – West University of Timișoara, Romania.
Programme Committee – 17th IIAI International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 16-18 December, 2024.
Distinguished Guest – IWALS 2024: The 10th International Workshop on Advanced Learning Sciences. Hanoi, Vietnam, 14-15 December, 2024.
Technical Programme Committee – UKCI 2024: The 23rd UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence. Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, 2-4 September 2024.
Programme Committee – 15th International Conference on Smart Computing and Artificial Intelligence (SCAI 2024) at the 16th IIAI International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics (IIAI AAI 2024). Takamatsu, Japan, July 6-12, 2024.
2023
Technical Programme Committee Member and Deep Learning Session Chair, UKCI 2023 – Invited by General Chair Dr. Nitin Naik (Aston University, UK) to the Technical Programme Committee at UKCI 2023: The 22nd UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence.
Programme Committee Member, ALIFE 2023 – Invited by General Chair Dr. Hiroyuki Iizuka (Hokkaido University, Japan) to join the Programme Committee at ALIFE 2023: The 2023 Conference on Artificial Life.
Workshop Organiser for NOTION at PETRA 2023 – Organisation of the Human Behaviour Monitoring, Interpretation and Understanding workshop (NOTION) at the 16th PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments Conference (PETRA). Organisers: Professor Ahmad Lotfi, Dr. Jordan J. Bird, and Dr. Abdallah Naser.
Programme Committee Member, UA-DIGITAL 2023 – Peer reviewer for the UA-DIGITAL 2023: UA Digital Theme Research Twinning conference. Virtual, Ukraine, 27-31 March 2023.
2022
Visiting Lecture at Tokyo Metropolitan University – Delivered a lecture in person at Tokyo Metropolitan University Hino Campus, Hachioji, Tokyo on my PhD Research: A Socially Interactive Multimodal Human-Robot Interaction Framework. Lecture presented at the Kubota Lab.
Workshop Organiser for NOTION at PETRA 2022 – Organisation of the Human Behaviour Monitoring, Interpretation and Understanding workshop (NOTION) at the 15th PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments Conference (PETRA). Organisers: Professor Ahmad Lotfi, Dr. David Adama, and Dr. Jordan J. Bird.
http://www.petrae.org/workshops/NOTION.html (Available here after the PETRA 2022 website goes offline)