Muhammad Adil Raja

Address:DHA, Lahore CanttPakistanDate of Birth: 12-01-1977

Phone: +92 (0)322 4670594e-mail: adilraja@yahoo.comWeb: http://www.ul.ie/wireless

ObjectivesI am very fond of doing scientific or engineering research either as a professional or as a hobbyist.Given a decent opportunity I would like to address a challenging research question that addresses aniche that human society currently faces. This Curriculum Vitae gives a snapshot of what I havebeen doing in the past. A statement of my research interests can be solicited by e-mail if it is notalready provided with this application (which shouldn’t have been the case had it been asked foralready).

Work ExperienceFebruary 2010 – February 2011, Post-Doctorate ResearcherOrange Labs, France Telecom R&D, Lannion, France

September 2008 – June 2009, Assistant ProfessorCollege of Information technology,University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.

EducationFebruary 2005 – August 2008, Ph. D. FallUniversity of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.

Fall 2004, M.S in Computer ScienceLahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan.

Fall 2000, B.E. in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials ScienceUniversity of Engineering and Technology Lahore (UET), Lahore, Pakistan.

Current ResearchTheory and Applications of Machine Learning

During my research experience as a PhD student my research interests evolved, shifted and settledto theory and applications of machine learning. Most of the practical engineering (and otherwise)problems in the world are basically optimization problems. Machine learning just addresses thisissue pretty well.

Previous ResearchReal-time Non-intrusive Quality Estimation of VoIP.

My PhD research was focused on derivation of effective techniques for real-time, non-intrusive esti-mation of speech quality. This involved development of both parametric and signal-based models.I have worked on the derivation of equipment impairment factors for the E-model and also onfeature significance analysis of ITU-T P.563 i.e. on improving ITU-T recommended standards fornon-intrusive speech quality estimation.

Currently, I am working on the extension of ITU-T G.107, the E-model, for the mixed NB/WBscenarios. The goal is to develop a new model specially tailored for the needs of France Telecoms’

telecommunications network.

Presentations and Talks• A Reflection on My Research Interests. A seminar presentation given in Namal college, 26th

January, 2015. The presentation can be listened on SoundCloud.

• ’On Losses, Pauses and Jumps and the Wideband E-Model’, in Orange Labs, France TelecomR&D, July 2010.

• ”Real-Time Non-Intrusive Speech Quality Estimation Of Voice Over Internet Protocol UsingGenetic Programming’, Thesis Presentation in University of Limerick, Ireland, May 2008.

• ’Real-Time, Non-Intrusive Evaluation of VoIP’, In 10th European Conference on Genetic Pro-gramming (EuroGP), 2007

• ’Non-Intrusive Quality Evaluation of VoIP Using Genetic Programming’, in First Interna-tional Conference on Bio Inspired Models of Networks Information and Computer Systems(Bionetics), 2006, Cavalese, Italy.

Research Collaborations• I have been an active research member of the wireless access research group of University of

Limerick in Ireland as a PhD student.

• During my PhD studies I also had a chance to collaborate with a center of excellence, namely,Biocomputing and Developmental Systems (BDS) Group headed by Dr. Conor Ryan 1 inUniversity of Limerick, Ireland.

• Recently, during my postdoctoral research in France Telecom I again had a chance to buildindustry academia liaison between France Telecom and the group.

Research Interests• Computer-aided Diagnosis.

• Pattern Recognition, Classification/Regression Techniques.

• Real-time, Non-intrusive Speech Quality Estimation Techniques.

• Any question related to speech and audio processing.

• Applications of Image processing and Computer Vision.

• Hyper heuristics.

• Computational Neuroscience.

• Computational Biology.

• Communication Networks.

• Artificial Worlds and Artificial Societies.

• Applied Statistics.

• Digital Signal Processing and its Applications.

• Automatic Speech Recognition.

• Machine Learning methods in particular Neural Networks and Genetic and Evolutionary Al-gorithms for discovering, rediscovering and tuning models for complex engineering problems.Recent focus has been on the use of Genetic Programming (GP) for derivation of parsimoniousmodels with good generalizing abilities on unseen data. For this purpose I have been look-ing into augmenting GP with first and second order numerical algorithms and with simulatedannealing and Genetic Algorithms.

1http://.ul.ie

• Over the past year or so, I have been trying to develop an understanding on as to how humanmind and brain function. To this end, I have been involved in reading books from notableauthors such as Anthony Robins, Marvin Minsky and Kay Redfield Jamison. I am particularlyinterested in developing computational models that may aid in estimating and treating mentalillnesses such as bipolar disorder. This, however, has remained more of a hobby or an interestdue to lack of resources.

Additional Work ExperienceAssistant Professor University of the PunjabLahore, Pakistan 2008–2009

• Machine Learning

• Program coordinator MS/MPhil studies.

Teaching Assistant University of LimerickLimerick, Ireland. Fall 2005

• ET4718: Java Programming and Introduction to Software Engineering

• ET4747: Distributed Systems

• CE4701: Computer Software

• I have also supported a number of course modules at the Information and CommunicationsTechnologies (ICT) Learning Center, University of Limerick. The courses include Programmingin Pascal, Data Structures and Algorithms, Object Oriented Programming and ComputerNetworks.

Software ProjectsDevelopment of a Markov Chain Model for Characterization of Network Related Im-pairments That May Affect VoIP Speech QualityRecently I have been involved in developing a four state Markov chain model to characterize theintensity of additional network layer impairments that may affect the speech quality of Voice overInternet Protocol (VoIP). The impairments include pauses (temporal dilation) as well as jumps(temporal contraction) of the speech signal that ensue from interactions between network jitter andthe jitter buffer. As the work is under review currently, complete details of the project cannot bedisclosed.

Development of Genetic Programming (GP) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) SystemsI have been involved in development of a GA-GP hybrid for my research work. The project wasaimed at development of a hybrid optimization system. The hybrid approach allows for the GP tosearch for an appropriate structure for the target model, whereas the GA tunes the coefficients ofthe models during evolution. The development was done in Java. The source code of the project ishosted at SourceForge and can be found here.

Development of Grammatical Evolution (GE)I have also been involved in developing GE software that may be used to search computer programsbefitting a certain problem domain using an arbitrary search technique such as a GA or a parti-cle swarm optimizer. The source code for the project is hosted on SourceForge and can be found here.

Evolutionary NurseryEvolutionary Nursery is an implementation of a simple genetic algorithm suited to numerical opti-mization problems. The implementation was done in Java. The source code of the project is hostedat SourceForge and can be found here

Java BeagleJava Beagle is an implementation of genetic programming. The framework is based on, and inspiredfrom, Beagle Puppy which is a project of Open Beagle. The framework is implemented in java. It’simplementation was particularly aimed at symbolic regression problems, although it can be usedfor other problems such as classification or even evolvable hardware design with some tweaks. Theframework also implements certain other nice algorithms that make the overall symbolic regressionmore efficient. For instance, the frameworks has implemented in it lexicographic parsimony pressure(LPP) proposed by Sean Luke, linear scaling and subtree caching proposed by Maarten Keijzer. Thesoftware is hosted at SourceForge and the source code of the project can be found here.

Development of a Graphical Controller for ULMAN2 Wireless Ad-hoc Network:The Controller is responsible for remote command execution and file transfer on a variable number ofwireless nodes concurrently. Java Programming language was used as the development environmentand Unix as the underlying operating system. The controller has a graphical user interface. Someof the functions of the Controller are:

• A variable number of graphical consoles can be invoked by the user to monitor and control thewireless network.

• It provides functionality to execute remote commands concurrently such as running ping com-mands, routing protocols and invoking VoIP calls on wireless nodes.

• It displays a time varying topology of the network on a graphical panel.

Implementation and Evaluation of a Routing Algorithm for Sensor Networks:The focus of my master’s project was to highlight the advantages of a routing protocol for sensornetworks based on MTE (minimum transmission energy) routing. I designed and developed a graph-ical simulator for evaluation of my algorithm. I used C-sharp for development of the project.

Some other academic projects include:

• Development of a Distributed File System in C-sharp.

• Development of Simulation Modules for Spanning Tree and RIP Protocols.

• A Simulation Study of CR-LDP Based MPLS Enabled Network.

My Research ProposalsI have written a number of research proposals over the last couple of years that basically reflect myinterests in various types of problem domains. Basically all of them are driven by my interest to workon theory and applications of machine learning. And even in machine learning, I am particularlyinterested in working on evolutionary algorithms and their applications. All of my research proposalsare present online. Following is a list of all of them.

Statement of Research Interests: Theory and Applications of Machine Learning:This is my primary research proposal and I would like to call it research proposal prime. This has beenthoroughly peer-reviewed. The only objection that was raised to it is that it is too long. I personallydon’t mind that. Instead I believe that its length compensates for any lack of comprehension a shorterresearch proposal may have suffered from. And in order to compensate for its length I have derivedand coined a number of shorter research proposals. This research proposal is hosted on SlideShareand can be found here.

An Abridged Version of My Research Interests:As the name suggests, this is a shorter version of my research proposal prime. It can be downloadedfrom here.

2University of Limerick Mobile Ad-hoc Network

High Performance Computing for Artificial Intelligence Applied to Finance:I wrote this research proposal some time ago as part of my job application for a postdoctoralposition to a French company. I could not follow up the application process pretty well due to otherengagements. I have the research proposal nonetheless and it can be downloaded from here.

Understanding Human Consciousness:One of the subjects that has always drawn my attention to itself is neuroscience. This researchproposal highlights various problems that I have been curious about. The research proposal can bedownloaded from here.

Issues in Developing Home Based Businesses:Job security has become increasingly fragile these days. The truth is that one day a person can gettotally unexpected promotion, perks and privileges, and the very next day he can be fired. This hasbecome somewhat of a global trend. Given this many people have reverted to becoming freelanceprofessionals. This research proposal tries to look in to ways and schemes which can liberate peoplefrom working for someone else and to start their own work. The proposal can be found here.

Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and a Serene Society:This research proposal is one of my most cherished brain children. For quite sometime I have beenthinking about writing something on these lines. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becomingincreasingly common by the day. The omnipresence of quad-copters on various television channelshas become quite banal nowadays. This research proposal is aimed at looking into schemes for de-veloping fully autonomous, cooperative and self-coordinating fleets of UAVs. The research proposalcan be found here.

Theory and Applications of Hyper-Heuristics:The idea of having an algorithm that spins algorithms for solving user defined problems is fascinatingin its own right. This is what hyper-heuristics is all about. This small research proposal reflects myinterests about this topic and can be found here.

Fast Track Deployment of Renewable Energy Systems in Pakistan:This research proposal highlights various important problems in the increasingly multidisciplinarydomain of renewable energy. The research proposal can be found here.

Problems in Designing Efficient Water Distribution Networks:This research proposal highlights issues in the design and optimization of water distribution systemsin Pakistan. Water distribution is another problem lurking in our country. If not tackled at the righttime, that is now, this can become quite grave in the future. You can find this research proposalhere.

My Teaching PortfolioAlthough I have never considered teaching to be my main feat, I have recently started taking interestin it and begun to enjoy it. I realize that teaching is important for dissemination of ideas. In wake ofthis I have also portfolio a teaching portfolio which is basically a reflection of my teaching philosophy.You can find it here.

Graduate Courses Taken• Advanced Algorithms.

• Network Protocols and Standards.

• Distributed Systems.

• Digital Signal Processing.

• Digital Image Processing.

• Multimedia Communications.

• Data Warehousing.

• Topics in Internet Research.

• Machine Learning.

• Stochastic Systems.

• Software Tools and Processes.

• Business Management for Computer Scientists.

• Project Management.

• Graph Theory.

• High Performance Computing.

• Multi Protocol Label Switching.

• Internetworking with Unix TCP/IP.

Undergraduate Courses Taken• Physical Metallurgy.

• Structure of Materials.

• Heat Treatment.

• Powder Metallurgy.

• Foundry Engineering.

• Welding Engineering.

• Strength of Materials.

• Ferrous Metallurgy.

• Non-ferrous Metallurgy.

• Corrosion Engineering

• Materials Science.

• Fuels and Refractories.

Awards• Postgraduate Research, Study Abroad, Scholarship, Higher Education Commission of Pak-

istan, Spring 2004.

• Postgraduate Research Award, Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, Fall 2003.

• One of the papers was nominated for the best paper award by the EuroGP 2007 conferencecommittee.

• Honorable mentions were awarded twice for the 2007 and 2008 Hummies awards for human-competitive results produced by genetic and evolutionary computation 3.

• A non-Eu Fee scholarship was awarded for the academic year 2007.

• Three travel bursaries were awarded by conference management committees of EuroGP 20074,EuroGP 20085 and GECCO 20086 to travel to Spain, Italy and the U.S respectively.

3http://www.genetic-programming.org/hc2007/cfe2007.html4http://evonet.lri.fr/TikiWiki/tiki-index.php?page=EuroGP5http://evostar.iti.upv.es/6http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2008/

Other Qualifications• Graduate Record Examination (GRE): I appeared for GRE in Summer 2001 and my score was

1830.

• I attended a course on Behavioral Technology arranged by The Information and Communica-tions Technologies (ICT) Learning Centre, University of Limerick in January 2006.

• Excellent English communication skills.

• I am a reviewer of the journal: Soft Computing - A Fusion of Foundations, Methodologies andApplications, Springer.

• I am a reviewer of the journal: Neural Computing and Applications, Springer.

Skills• Programming Languages: Java, C, C++, C-shrap, IXP2400 micro-engine Assembly, MPI,

OpenMP.

• Software Tools: Matlab, Perl, HTML, NS-2, SQL, MS Office, Visio, LATEX.

• Operating Systems: Mac OS, Linux, Unix, Solaris, VxWorks, Windows.

• Hardware Platforms: I have data plane and core processor programming experience of Intel’sIXP2400 NPU.

• A thorough familiarity with various network protocols and standards.

• Debugging, code inspection.

Interests/Hobbies• Reading philosophy, popular science, popular psychology.

• Playing badminton, swimming.

• I like Indian film music and subcontinental classical music.

• I normally like Hollywood Movies. I was also a member of the dramatic society of UET Lahoreas a student.

• I like to create nerd humor at times. At one stage I wanted to be a stand-up Comedian. LeslieNielsen is my favorite Comedian.

• I was a member of the Palestine solidarity society in University of Limerick.

• I was also an active member of the badminton club of University of Limerick.

• I love to meet new people from diverse cultural backgrounds. In the past I found it particularlyeasy and enlightening to meet and befriend people from Romania, Libya, Pakistan, India,Bangladesh, France, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, the UK and the USA.

• I also love to cook oriental food.

• Jeg er ogs lære at dansk, og jeg er i modul 2.

• Scientific research.

Psyops PrimeI am extremely fond of writing. A couple of years ago I started blogging about various ideas that Ifound interesting. Following are some of my articles that you might find interesting:

• Understanding Free Will.

• Your Best Self.

• Geopolitical Weekly.

• On The Brink of Death.

• Of Indispensable Requirements and Aquaponics.

• And many other ideas that can be found on my blog.

Roaming ResearchersAs a researcher I have been intrigued by the idea to inculcate science and technology to students sothat they find them lucid. In order to achieve this goal I designed a course that I named ResearchMethods. This can be found on my website Roaming Researchers. I wrote all the contents of thislesson myself. Some of the lessons are as follows.

• The Power of Speech.

• Appreciate Optimization.

• Let’s Learn From Ants.

• A Lot More Applications of Evolutionary Algorithms.

• https://roamingresearchers.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/our-philosophy/Our Philosophy.

• There are numerous other lessons that you might find interesting as well and you can readthem at Roaming Researchers.

• Roaming Researchers is currently hosted with WordPress and a few other services. I am inthe process of converting it to a nice website. My ultimate goal is to upgrade it to a usefullearning management system.

Street ArticlesI participated in a 30 in 30 Challenge by street articles some time ago. In this I had to write 30articles in 30 days. Following are some of those articles.

• Rooftop Gardens.

• On Aquaponics.

• The Real Passion.

• Becoming a Better Writer.

• Helping the Impaired.

• You can read a lot more articles that I wrote on street articles.

My KitesSome times we have spare time and we do not have better ideas to utilize that. In order to utilizesome spare moments of my life I created presentations. I used latex’s Beamer package to developthem. Latex can create beautiful colorful presentations. I call my presentations kites because oftheir splendid hues and colors. You can find them on SlideShare.

Publications

PhD Thesis

Adil Raja, ’Real-Time Non-Intrusive Speech Quality Estimation Of Voice Over Internet ProtocolUsing Genetic Programming’, Defended May 2008, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Journal

Adil Raja, Anna Jagodzinska, and Vincent Barriac On Losses, Pauses and Jumps and the WidebandE-Model, In Review, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech And Language Processing, 2011.

*Adil Raja, R. Muhammad Atif Azad, Colin Flanagan and Conor Ryan Evolutionary Speech QualityEstimation in VoIP, Soft Computing - A Fusion of Foundations, Methodologies and Applications,Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, November 26, 2009.

*Adil Raja, R. Muhammad Atif Azad, Colin Flanagan and Conor Ryan A Methodology for De-riving VoIP Equipment Impairment Factors for a mixed NB/WB Context, IEEE Transactions onMultimedia, October 2008.

Book Chapters

Adil Raja and Colin Flanagan Real-Time, Non-Intrusive Speech Quality Estimation: A Signal-basedModel, In Proceedings of 11th European Conference on Genetic Programming (EuroGP), 2008.

Adil Raja, R. Muhammad Atif Azad, Colin Flanagan and Conor Ryan ’Real-Time, Non-IntrusiveEvaluation of VoIP’, In Proceedings of 10th European Conference on Genetic Programming (Eu-roGP), 2007. Nominated for best paper award.

Conference

Adil Raja, R. Muhammad Atif Azad, Colin Flanagan and Conor Ryan VoIP Speech Quality Esti-mation in a Mixed Context with Genetic Programming, In Proceedings of Genetic and EvolutionaryComputation Conference, July 2008.

*Adil Raja, R. Muhammad Atif Azad, Colin Flanagan, Conor Ryan An Evolutionary Approach toSpeech Quality Estimation. in Proceedings of FBIT 2007.

Adil Raja, R. Muhammad Atif Azad, Colin Flanagan, Dorel Picovici and Conor Ryan ’Non-IntrusiveQuality Evaluation of VoIP Using Genetic Programming’, In the proceedings of First InternationalConference on Bio Inspired Models of Networks Information and Computer Systems (Bionetics),2006, Cavalese, Italy.

Dorel Picovici, Adil Raja, and Colin Flanagan, ’Real-time, Non-intrusive VoIP Evaluation UsingSecond Generation Network Processor’, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech andSignal Processing, 21-24 May 2006, 1208-1211.

References

1. Dr. Colin Flanagan, PhD Supervisor,Senior lecturerElectronic and Computer Engineering Department,University of Limerick,IrelandTel: +353-(0)-61-202622

2. Dr Atif Azad,Computer Science & Information Systems Department,University of Limerick,Limerick,Ireland,Phone: +353-61-202673E-Mail: atif.azad@ul.ie

3. Dr. Ole Winther,Associate Professor, Ph.D.Intelligent Signal Processing,Informatics and Mathematical Modelling,Technical University of Denmark (DTU) B321DK-2800 Lyngby,Copenhagen,DenmarkPhone: +45 4525 3895E-mail: owi@imm.dtu.dkWeb: http://cogsys.imm.dtu.dk/staff/winther/

4. Dr. Vincent BarriacFrance Telecom R&D,Lannion,France,Phone: +33 -(0)296051810E-mail: vincent.barriac@orange-ftgroup.com

5. Anna JagodzinskaFrance Telecom R&D,Lannion,France,Phone: +33 -(0)296052290E-mail: anna.jagodzinska@orange-ftgroup.com

6. Dr. Ronan SkehillElectronic & Computer Engineering DepartmentUniversity of Limerick,Limerick,IrelandPhone: +353-61-202402E-mail: ronan.skehill@ul.ieWeb: http://www.ul.ie/wireless

7. Dr. John Nelson,Electronic & Computer Engineering Department,

University of Limerick,LimerickIrelandTel: +353-(0)-61-202358E-mail : john.nelson@ul.ieWeb: http://www.ul.ie/wireless