Welcome to the Augmented Cognition Lab (ACLab)

ACLab works at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning. We are interested in representation learning algorithms for visual perception (object recognition, localization, segmentation, pose estimation, activity tracking, ...) with the multidisciplinary goal of understanding, detecting, and predicting human behaviors by estimating their physical, physiological and emotional states. For a robust and efficient state estimation, we represent the state of the world in a low-dimensional embedding, called "pose", which is a succinct interpretable representation of the important information in the state. At ACLab, we use machine intelligence (mainly Computer Vision and Machine Learning) to solve these pose estimation problems and to give human leverage, not to replace them! At ACLab, we are also working on problems in Small Data domains. To deal with data limitation, we do integrate explicit (structural or data-driven) domain knowledge into the learning process via generative models, while benefiting from the recent advancements in data efficient ML.

Join our research initiative: sign up for our data collection study!

If you are parent of an infant under age one and want to participant in this data collection study, please email us at: aclabdata@northeastern.edu or fill out the sign up form for participation. The participants will receive a $100 Amazon e-gift card, a commercial baby monitor, and toys.

ACLab Funded Projects

  • Research in ACLab is generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, Sony, MathWorks, Amazon Cloud Services, Biogen, NVIDIA, and Oracle. For the full list of research project please visit: https://web.northeastern.edu/ostadabbas/research/

Notes for Interested Undergraduate Students:

  • ACLab is always looking for talented and enthusiastic undergraduate students. Please check the Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor Awards center at Northeastern and based on your eligibility and the future deadlines contact me to define a project for you in line with the ACLab's mission. Deadlines: The last weekday of October for Spring semester; The last weekday of February for Summer sessions (i.e., May-August); The last weekday of July for Fall semester.
Our AR/VR technologies featured at NU Engineering magazine.
Panel Discussion at CV4Smalls Workshops at WACV 2024, January 2024.
Sarah presents AiWover at the Museum of Science in Boston, Dec 2022
Celebrating my Tenure Promotion with the ACLab at the Sunset Cruise, May 2023
Celebrating the farewell and promotion of our scientist and postdoc Dr. Michael Wan and Dr. Lingfei Luan at the Dave & Buster's, Aug 2023
Dr. Shini Somara Visited Us at National Engineers Week, Feb. 2023.
A typical Monday at the ACLab Reading Club with a visitor from Apple Inc., July 24, 2023.
ACLab hosted two YSP High School Students (Victoria and Franklin) and one REU Community College Student (Muskan) in Summer of 2023.
Sai Kumar Reddy Manne MS Project Presentation (Title: Video-based Infant Respiration Estimation via Color and Motion tracking​), April 24th, 2023.
Sarah's Lightening Talk at Discover Experiential AI at IEAI Inaugural Event, April 6, 2022.
Shuangjun's Hooding Ceremony, May 1st, 2023.
Amir's Hooding Ceremony, Sep 9th, 2021.
Behnaz Rezaei PhD Proposal Defense (Title: Action Recognition Explained), May 29th, 2019.
ACLab and Shuangjun received Amazon AWS award, 2018.
ACLab at CVPR2019 with 2 Posters, June 16-20, 2019.
Behnaz Rezaei PhD Dissertation Defense (Title: Low-dimensional Representation of Visual Dynamics towards Animal/Human Behavior Monitoring), April 14th, 2020.
Justin and Shuangjun received Best Engineering and Technology award at RISE:2017.
Yu Yin MS Thesis Defense (Title: Affective Pose: Facial & Physiology Expression of Emotion), Dec 3rd, 2018.
Our collaborative project “A-Eye,” is selected for Phase I GapFund360 funding, Jan 2020.
Final Presentation of our High School Students, Sophia and Caleb, Northeastern Young Scholar's Program (YSP), Summer 2019.
Traditional ACLab Gathering at the Beginning of Spring 2018.
Xiaofei Huang and Kathan Vyas presenting their papers at MLPS Conference, Oct 2019.
Shuangjun Liu PhD Proposal Defense (Title: United Human Pose), Dec 5th, 2019.
Amirreza Farnoosh gave an Oral Presentation at MLHC, Aug 2017,
Shuangjun's paper was presented in MICCAI conference, Oct 2019.
Kathan Vyas MS Thesis Defense (Title: Data Efficient Analysis of Human Behavior by Spatio-Temporal Pose Generation and Inference), Dec 3rd, 2020.
Amirreza Farnoosh PhD Proposal Defense (Title: Unsupervised Learning of Low-Dimensional Dynamical Representations from Spatiotemporal Data), Dec 16th, 2020.
Nihang Fu MS Thesis Defense (Title: Data Efficient Infant Pose and Posture Recognition), June 24, 2021.
Amirreza Farnoosh PhD Dissertation Defense (Title: Unsupervised Learning of Low-Dimensional Dynamical Representations from Spatiotemporal Data), Aug 4th, 2021.
Graduation party for several ACLab members: Amir, Kathan, and Nihang.
Divyang Teotia MS Thesis Defense (Title: Interpreting Face Inference Models using Hierarchical Network Dissection), Dec 3rd, 2021.
ACLab retreat, Summer 2022 (Boston Common)
Shuangjun Liu PhD Dissertation Defense (Title: United Human Pose: Integrating Domain Knowledge and Machine Learning), July 18th, 2022.
Max presenting at New England Computer Vision Workshop, Dec 2022
Kashish Jain MS Thesis Defense (Title: Vision-Based Analysis of Infant Non-Nutritive Sucking via Mouth and Pacifier Tracking), Dec 12th, 2022.
MathWorks Day presentation by Dr. Michael Wan and Shaotong Zhu, March 1st, 2023.
Building Bridges Session at ACLab, April 14, 2023
Xiangyu Bai MS Thesis Defense (Title: Closing the Gap between Synthetic and Real-World Domains in Autonomous Simulation), April 18th, 2023.
Trevor Powers The Gordon Institute of Engineering Leadership Presentation (Title: Casualty Status Communication Tool (CSCT): An End-to-end Pipeline for Battlefield Casualty Status Documentation​), July 21st, 2023.
Cholpady Vikram Kamath MS Thesis Defense (Title: An edge-friendly development of human pose estimation in extreme and private conditions), April 20th, 2023.
Dr. Michael Wan Presented two papers at the MICCAI'23, Oct 2023.

Sponsers