Short Biography

Abdullah Al Asif is a senior research assistant at the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University. He has a diverse range of interests encompassing computer vision, natural language processing, and psychology. His ultimate goal is to develop intelligent agents capable of comprehending the visual world beyond simply recognizing labels or sentences without relying on explicit human supervision. Currently, his research is centered around the practical applications of automation and data analysis to address real-world challenges in decision-making and strategic planning. At present, Asif is actively engaged in a randomized controlled trial (RCT)-based project on household electricity consumption and customer behavior in Dhaka. In this capacity, he leads the data collection process, undertakes data cleansing and processing for subsequent analysis, and performs the preliminary study. Moreover, he has developed a Python-based automated system capable of generating dynamic consumer profile reports from the collected data. In 2020 and 2021, Asif developed an effective approach for social targeting, prioritizing, and aiding poorer households to alleviate poverty and inequality using machine learning. He also worked on satellite imagery's nighttime light (NTL) data to determine nightlight luminance in Bangladesh using image processing and QGIS. Asif completed his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from East West University (EWU) in 2020. During that time, he worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant at EWU from 2018 to 2020. In his spare time, he likes to watch movies (sci-fi and psychological thrillers), play (poorly) table tennis, and pretend to be a philosopher.