Fields of expertise:

Programming languages/ frameworks:

Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), San Sebastián, Basque Country, ES

Postdoctoral Researcher

Jul 2023 - Present

• Collaborating and operating within the conscioussness group composed of 7 researchers on real time optimization algorithms and co-adapted ML models for a real-time fMRI brain activity decoding.

• Building and improving the processing and decoding pipeline for fMRI brain activity decoding to produce the second version of an open source framework for real-time fMRI decoded neurofeedback.

• Produced a more than 30% enhancement in the whole brain decoding pipeline by creating a new state of the art method using co-adapted ML models that was presented at an international conference and a journal pending publication

Brainstack, Sousse, TN

Senior AI developer

Mar 2023 - Jun 2023 (4 months )

• Designed and built a full AI product from scratch, while supervising the product two junior Data scientist.

• Constructed 5 preprocessing pipelines, a data acquisition tool based on web scrapping and trained and deployed 9 different models.

• Created the alpha version of a web agent capable of interactive dialog with the user in order to execute actions on websites.

Computer Embedded Systems. Lab, University of Sfax,TN

AI Researcher and Data scientist

Oct 2018 – Feb 2023 (4 years, 5 months )

• Collaborated with 8 researchers and 2 project managers to solve 2 research problems using supervised learning machine learning approaches and improve the performance of predictive models.

• Implemented feature extraction and data preprocessing solutions to optimize the performance of 10 ML algorithms and built a superior CNN based deep learning architecture for time series data.

• Produced 4 publications in journals and conferences and outperformed 15 current state of the art ML methodologies.

Djagora Fablab, Sakiet Ezzit Sfax, TN

Team Supervisor and Trainer

Oct 2021 – Sep 2022 (11 months )

• Led a team of 5 junior developers as a scrum master in an Agile workflow for the first year of an innovative startup.

• Supervised two projects that involved data cleaning/cleansing, data visualization, feature extraction and data acquisition.

• Delivered the startup first prototype product and trained two data science interns that graduated through this project.

Tunisian Company of Automation, Sfax, TN

R&D Engineer

Oct 2020 – Dec 2022 (2 years, 3 months )

• Managed research activities in an industry based ecosystem and collaborated with a team of 4 engineers.

• Employed data wrangling, feature engineering and data scaling to optimize 8 ML classifiers for time series data.

• Designed a novel feature extraction technique with 31% performance improvement, developed two ML preprocessing pipelines and communicated the results in a conference proceedings.

ETSIT - Universidad de Valladolid, ES

Visiting Researcher

Feb 2021 – Jul 2021 (6 months )

• Collaborated with international research group and integrated with over 200 international alumni and alumnus.

• Reviewed and investigated DL based literature, presented scientific research advancements and participated in two courses on business economics and numerical algorithms.

• Wrote a 28-pages long book chapter on the basics of deep learning and contributed to the AI scientific community.

Laboratorio de Bases de Datos, Universidad de A Coruña,ES

Visiting Researcher

Feb 2020 – Jun 2020 (5 months )

• Integrated with a new research group in an international context and discussed possible collaborations with over 15 lab members in various research disciplines.

• Exchanged knowledge and expertise with 4 researchers and faculty members and experimented and engineered various feature extraction methodologies to optimize 8 ML classifiers.

• Designed and engineered a novel feature extraction methodology and Presented the results in a international conference.

ISIMG, University of Gabes, Tunisia

Researcher Master’s degree graduate

Feb 2017 – Feb 2018 (11 months )

• Implemented wavelet decomposition, SWT, ICA and FIR filters with the assistance of the EEGLAB library in matlab to extract and localize the origin source of activities in the patient’s brain.

• Evaluated the results with goodness of fit and other case specific metrics and presented the results in an international conference.

Education

ENET’Com, University of Sfax, TN

PhD. in Science and Technology of Information and Communication

May 2023

ISIMG, University of Gabes, TN

M.Sc. in Electronics and Communication

Feb 2018

FSM, University of Monastir, TN

B.Sc. in Electronics, Electrical engineering and Automation

Jun 2015

Teaching experience

Faculty of Sciences of Monastir (FSM), Monastir University, Tunisia

Assistant Professor

Oct 2021 – Jul 2022 (10 months )

• Coordinated with 4 colleagues on a teaching philosophy and working strategy for a full academic year.

• Designing and presenting lab lectures in the department of Computer Science for three undergraduate courses: Information security, System administration and Operating systems.

• Tested and Corrected exams for 166 undergraduate students to evaluate their continuous performances over 2 semesters.

Accomplishments and awards

• Top 4 and first place for the Computer Science field in the 3M4Q (3 Minutes 4 Questions) IEEE competition.

• Top 4 and first place for the Computer Science field in the I&V-PhD (Innovation & Valorization) competition.

• 2 years MOBIDOC grant for the incorporation of PhD holders in the socioeconomic environment.

• ERASMUS+ KA107 student grant from Feb 2020 - Jun 2020 at the Universidad da Coruna, Spain.

• ERASMUS+ KA107 student grant from Feb 2021 - Jul 2021 at the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain.

Spoken languages

Publications

Journal Articles

Abdennour, Najmeddine, Tarek Ouni, and N Ben Amor. driver identification using only the can-bus vehicle data through an rcn deep learning approach. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 136:103707, 2021.

Tarek Frikha, Abdennour, Najmeddine, Faten Chaabane, Oussama Ghorbel, Rami Ayedi, Osama R Shahin, and Omar Cheikhrouhou. source localization of eeg brainwaves activities via mother wavelets families for swt decomposition. Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 2021, 2021.

Frikha Tarek, Choura Hedi, Abdennour, Najmeddine, Ghorbel Oussama, and Abid Mohamed. esp2: embedded smart parking prototype. Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, 5(6):1569–1576, 2020.

Conference Proceedings

Abdennour, Najmeddine, Tarek Ouni, and Nader Ben Amor. the importance of signal pre-processing for machine learning: the influence of data scaling in a driver identity classification. In 2021 IEEE/ACS 18th International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA), pages 1–6. IEEE, 2021.

Abdennour, Najmeddine and Tarek Frikha. a fully automated intelligent system for vehicle storage and parking management using android and arduino hardware and applications. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Design & Test of Integrated Micro & Nano-Systems (DTS), pages 1–4. IEEE, 2019.

Abdennour, Najmeddine, Abir Hadriche, Tarek Frikha, and Nawel Jmail. extraction and localization of non-contaminated alpha and gamma oscillations from eeg signal using finite impulse response, stationary wavelet transform, and custom fir. In International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, pages 511–520. Springer, 2018.

Chamakh Youssef, Ben Rached Mohamed, Abdennour, Najmeddine, Tarek Frikha, and Wassim Jmal. mine detecting robot prototyping. In 2017 2nd International Conference on Anti-Cyber Crimes (ICACC), pages 183–186. IEEE, 2017.

Books/Book Chapters

Abdennour, Najmeddine, Tarek Ouni, and Nader Ben Amor. The basics of deep learning algorithms and their effect on driving behavior and vehicle communications. Deep Learning and Its Applications for Vehicle Networks 14, 295 - 321.