Dr. Usman Nazir SCIT - BNU

Dr. Usman Nazir is a prominent Research Scientist specializing in AI, remote sensing, and environmental data analysis. He currently serves as Group Head at the Center for AI Research, Beaconhouse National University. His academic journey includes a split-site PhD in Computer Science from LUMS and the University of Leeds, where he developed efficient techniques for spatial and spatio-temporal analysis in remote sensing data. Usman has also been affiliated with several leading research institutions, including the University of Oxford and the University of Leeds, where he worked on projects ranging from poverty mapping to optimizing vehicle emissions.

His contributions to the field have earned him numerous accolades, including the prestigious Commonwealth Split-Site PhD Scholarship and Facebook's Computer Vision for Global Challenges award. Usman’s work is widely published in top-tier journals and conferences, reflecting his dedication to addressing real-world challenges through AI. He has played a pivotal role in advancing remote sensing methodologies for environmental health monitoring and disaster impact assessments. With a deep passion for leveraging AI for societal benefits, Usman continues to push the boundaries of AI research, focusing on the intersection of technology, climate change, and public health.

• Split-site PhD in Computer Science, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan & University of Leeds, UK
• MS in Computer Networks, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan
• BS in Telecommunication, COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI), Pakistan

Teaching Experience

• Assistant Professor, School of Computer and Information Technology (SCIT), Beaconhouse National University (BNU) (Feb 2024 – Present)
• Instructor, Knowledge Stream (Fall 2023)
• Guest Lecturer, Deep Learning Course, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) (Spring 2023 & Fall 2022)
• Lab Demonstrator, School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK (Fall 2021)
• Lecturer, Department of Statistics and Computer Science, University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences (UVAS) (2016 – 2017)
• Lab Engineer, Digital Signal Processing Lab, COMSATS University (Spring 2014)
• Teaching Assistant, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) (2019 – 2022)

Research Experience

• Research Associate, Center for Urban Informatics, Technology, and Policy (CITY), LUMS (Aug 2022 – Feb 2024)
• Research Studentship, A Natural Moving2Health Experiment, University of Oxford, UK (Summer 2022)
• Research Fellow, MODALES Project, University of Leeds, UK (Fall 2021)
• Challenge Principal Investigator, Turing Data Study Group, Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA), University of Leeds, UK (Summer 2021)
• Research Supervision (MS Thesis), TPI Lab, LUMS (2020 – 2022)
• Research Assistant, Inference and Protocol Design Team, AdCom Lab, LUMS (2012 – 2013)

• Commonwealth Split-Site PhD Scholar, University of Leeds, UK (2020–2021)
• Winner, Facebook’s Computer Vision for Global Challenges (CV4GC) (2019)
• PhD Scholarship Recipient, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan (2017–2022)
• Full Merit ICT Scholarship, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Islamabad, Pakistan (2008–2012)
• Student of the Year, Government Degree College, Pattoki, Pakistan (2007)

• City Management Course, Atomcamp (Nov–Dec 2022)
• Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning, deeplearning.ai on Coursera (2019)
• Convolutional Neural Networks, deeplearning.ai on Coursera (2019)
• Structuring Machine Learning Projects, deeplearning.ai on Coursera (2019)
• Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter Tuning, Regularization, and Optimization, deeplearning.ai on Coursera (2019)
• Neural Networks and Deep Learning, deeplearning.ai on Coursera (2018)
• Discrete Time Signals and Systems, edX (2014)

• LaTeX Workshop, University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) faculty (Pattoki & Lahore campuses) (2016)
• Damage Assessment in QGIS, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) (2022)
• Design Summit AI Hackathon, Beaconhouse National University (BNU) (2024)

• 2-Day Course Design Express by LUMS Learning Institute (2024)
• 4-Day International Training on “Bridging the Critical Data Gap-Sustainable Water Resources Management Using Satellite Radar Altimetry” (2022)
• 5-Day Course Design Express by LUMS Learning Institute (2022)
• “Pakistan’s Global Graduates, Essential skills to get ready for a global educational platform” by UPSIGN (UK Pakistan Science and Innovation Global Network) (2021)
• 5th Workshop on Precision Agriculture and Forestry, LUMS (2019) Training Workshop on Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture, NARC (2018)
• Hands-on Training workshop on Data Science CUI (2018)
• Cloud Computing Workshop: Department of Computer Science, SBASSE, LUMS (2015)
• Power of Positive Attitude’ Training at PTCL Regional Telecom Training School (RTTS), Lahore, Pakistan (2012)

• Water at Risk, Agriculture in Peril: The Shriek of Survival
  by Zia Tahseen, Usman Nazir, Wasif Yousuf, Aaarish Maqsood & Mohammed Kamran 2025
• U. Nazir, et al. Predicting malaria outbreaks using earth observation measurements and spatio-temporal deep learning modelling: a South Asian case study from 2000 to 2017, The Lancet Journal 2024.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Humanitarian costs of climate change: mapping the impact of extreme floods on population displacement and disruption to education and health using earth observation and data fusion”, PHAM 2024
• U. Nazir, et al. “Predicting malaria outbreaks using earth observation measurements and spatio-temporal deep learning modelling: a South Asia case study from 2000 to 2017”, PHAM 2024
• U. Nazir, et al. “Towards a spatio-temporal deep learning approach to predict malaria outbreaks using earth observation measurements in South Asia”, NeurIPS 2023 Workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Spatio-temporal Graph Neural Networks with Block Adjacency Matrix (STAG-NN-BA)”, AAAI Climate Change Symposium 2023.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Feature Selection on Sentinel-2 Multi-spectral Imagery for Efficient Tree Cover Estimation”, IEEE IGARSS 2023.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Improved Flood Mapping For Efficient Policy Design By Fusion Of Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 And Landsat-9 Imagery To Identify Population And Infrastructure Exposed To Floods”, IEEE IGARSS 2023.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Mitigating climate and health impact of small-scale kiln industry using multi-spectral classifier and deep learning”, Workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning at ICLR 2023.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Kiln-Net: A Gated Neural Network for Detection of Brick Kilns in South Asia”, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (J-STARS) 2020.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Tiny-Inception-ResNet-v2: Using Deep Learning for Eliminating Bonded Labors of Brick Kilns in South Asia”, CVPR Workshop 2019, Long Beach, CA, USA.
• M.A. Bhimra, U. Nazir & M. Taj, “Using 3D Residual Network for Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Remote Sensing Data”, IEEE ICASSP 2019, Brighton, UK.
• U. Nazir, et al. “Accurate Localization Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks in the Presence of Cross Technology Interference”, ICONIP 2019, Sydney, Australia.

Supervision - Final Year Projects

• CONVERSATE: Autonomous Call Management System
  CONVERSATE Website
• POIs: Deep Feature Insights: Exploring Points of Interest
• PEER: Pre-Evaluated Efficiency Resources
• Predicting Global Burden of Disease (GBD) using Environmental Indicators IBDEM Website
• ’Making AI work for Everyone’ in collaboration with 4xPillars, Germany 4xPillars Website
• Farmovation Solutions: Accelarting Technolgy adoption by Farmers Farmovation Website

Reviewer

• The 6th International Conference on Advancements in Computational Sciences (ICACS 2025)
• The International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP), 2024
• The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024
• The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2022
• The International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP), 2019

Judge

• 1st International Research Assembly 2024, hosted by the Research Advisory Committee, Shalamar Medical and Dental College

Panelist

• Socratic Seminar 2024 on ”Should Chat-GPT be included as a co-author?”, hosted by the Research Advisory Committee, Shalamar Medical and Dental College
• School of Tomorrow (SOT) 2024 conference ”Sustainability Reboot”, hosted by Beaconhouse School Systems (BSS)

• Email Address: usman.nazir@bnu.edu.pk
• Ext number: 503