Yousri Kessentini | Artificial Intelligence | Best Researcher Award

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yousri Kessentini | Artificial Intelligence | Best Researcher Award

Senior Researcher at Digital research center of Sfax, Tunisia

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yousri Kessentini is a computer science researcher and Associate Professor at the Digital Research Center of Sfax, Tunisia, where he leads the DeepVision research team. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Rouen, France, and specializes in deep learning, computer vision, and document image analysis. Dr. Kessentini has coordinated numerous national and international research projects and has received several awards, including honors from NVIDIA and the National Academy of Engineering. He is a certified Deep Learning instructor and an active contributor to the scientific community through publications, supervision, and editorial roles.

Publication Profile 

Scopus

Orcid

Educational Background 

Dr. Kessentini earned his Habilitation in Computer Science from the University of Sfax in 2021. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (2006–2009) and a DEA (postgraduate diploma) in Computer Science (2004) from the University of Rouen, France. He also obtained an engineering diploma in computer science from ENIS in 2003 and completed his secondary education with a Scientific Baccalaureate in Mathematics in 1998.

Professional Experience

Dr. Kessentini has accumulated rich academic and industrial experience over two decades. Since 2022, he has served as Associate Professor and Head of the DeepVision research team at CRNS. From 2017 to 2021, he was a senior researcher at the same center. Between 2013 and 2017, he was an assistant professor at ISIMA University of Monastir. He also held postdoctoral and graduate assistant roles in France, including at ITESOFT/LITIS and the University of Rouen. Since 2018, he has been a certified instructor and ambassador of the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, reflecting his leadership in AI education and training.

Research Interests

His research spans a variety of deep learning applications, including document image recognition, handwritten text analysis, multi-script OCR, generative models, and satellite image fusion. Dr. Kessentini also explores the intersection of AI with healthcare, smart cities, and industrial automation. His recent projects involve federated learning for medical imaging, vehicle identity recognition, Arabic script analysis, and human action recognition through remote sensing and video surveillance.

Awards and Honors

Dr. Kessentini has received numerous accolades for his contributions to AI research and innovation. In 2025, he was selected for the prestigious U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Symposium by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He ranked first in Tunisia’s national recruitment competition for associate professors in 2022. He received best student paper awards at ICPR 2020 and MedPRAI 2020 and earned a Jury Recognition Award in Tunisia’s national innovation competition in 2019. His research excellence was also recognized by NVIDIA with a GPU Grant in 2018, the same year he was certified as an official instructor and ambassador.

Publications 

Title: Information extraction from multi-layout invoice images using FATURA dataset

Year: 2025

Title: STF-Trans: A Two-stream SpatioTemporal Fusion Transformer for Very High Resolution Satellites Images

Year: 2024

Title: MSdocTr-Lite: A Lite Transformer for Full Page Multi-script Handwriting Recognition

Year: 2023

Title: Spectral-Temporal Fusion of Satellite Images Via an End-to-End Two-Stream Attention With an Effective Reconstruction Network

Year: 2023

Title: Few Shots Are All You Need: A Progressive Few Shot Learning Approach for Low Resource Handwriting Recognition

Year: 2022

Conclusions

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yousri Kessentini stands out as a leading figure in the fields of artificial intelligence and computer vision. His consistent contributions to scientific innovation, mentorship, and international collaboration have had a significant impact across academia and industry. His work demonstrates not only technical excellence but also a strong commitment to applying AI for societal and industrial benefit. With an impressive track record of publications, project leadership, and academic service, he is highly deserving of recognition in competitive research and innovation awards.

Francisco Mena | Machine Learning | Best Researcher Award

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Mr. Francisco Mena | Machine Learning | Best Researcher Award

PhD Candidate at University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany

Francisco Mena is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany, with a strong academic and research background in deep learning, multi-view learning, and unsupervised learning. His work focuses on developing scalable and generalizable machine learning models, particularly in complex real-world domains like Earth observation and astroinformatics, where missing data and multi-source fusion are major challenges. Francisco’s research emphasizes minimizing human intervention and domain dependency, aiming for methods that are more robust, adaptable, and explainable.

Publication Profile 

Orcid

Educational Background 🎓

  • PhD in Computer Science
    University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany
    Jan. 2022 – Present
    Thesis: Data Fusion in Multi-view Learning for Earth Observation Applications with Missing Views

  • Magíster en Ciencias de la Ingeniería Informática (Equivalent to M.Sc. in Computer Engineering)
    Federico Santa María Technical University (UTFSM), Valparaíso, Chile
    Mar. 2018 – Sep. 2020
    Thesis: Mixture Models for Learning in Crowdsourcing Scenarios
    GPA: 94%

  • Ingeniería Civil en Informática (Equivalent to Computer Engineering)
    UTFSM, Santiago, Chile
    Mar. 2013 – Sep. 2020
    GPA: 80% | Rank: Top 10% – 4th of 66 students

  • Licenciado en Ciencias de la Ingeniería Informática
    UTFSM, Santiago, Chile
    Mar. 2013 – Nov. 2017

  • High School
    New Little College, Santiago, Chile
    Mar. 2008 – Dec. 2012

Professional Experience 💼

  • Student Research Assistant – German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany
    Mar. 2022 – Present
    Working on Earth observation data for crop yield prediction using Python, QGIS, and Slurm.

  • Lecturer – University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany
    Oct. 2024 – Apr. 2025
    Teaching: Machine Learning for Earth Observation within a broader Data Science course.

  • Visiting PhD Researcher – Inria Montpellier, France
    Nov. 2024 – Jan. 2025
    Research in multi-modal co-learning, mutual distillation, and multi-task learning.

  • Academic Roles – Federico Santa María Technical University (UTFSM), Chile
    2014 – 2021
    Lecturer & Assistant roles in:

    • Computational Statistics

    • Artificial Neural Networks

    • Machine Learning

    • Operations Research

    • Mathematics Lab

  • Research Assistant – Chilean Virtual Observatory (ChiVO)
    Jul. 2017 – May 2018
    Astroinformatics projects involving ALMA/ESO datasets and Python-based data reduction.

  • Developer Intern – Farmacia Las Rosas S.A., Chile
    Jan. 2017 – Mar. 2017
    Desktop software automation using Python and QT.

Research Interests 🔬

  • Machine Learning Foundations:
    Deep Learning, Variational Autoencoders, Neural Networks, Representation Learning, Deep Clustering

  • Methodologies:
    Multi-view Learning, Data Fusion, Latent Variable Modeling, Dimensionality Reduction, Unsupervised Learning

  • Applications:
    Earth Observation, Remote Sensing, Vegetation Monitoring, Crowdsourcing, Neural Information Retrieval, Astroinformatics

Awards and Honors🏆✨

  • PhD Scholarship – RPTU, Germany (2022–present)

  • Scientific Initiation Award (PIIC) – UTFSM, Chile (2019–2020)

  • Master Program Scholarship – UTFSM, Chile (2018–2020)

  • Honor Roll – UTFSM, Chile (2013)

Conclusion🌟

Francisco Mena is a dedicated machine learning researcher whose work blends theoretical rigor with impactful real-world applications. His interdisciplinary approach spans remote sensing, astroinformatics, and crowdsourcing, focusing on creating models that are resilient to missing data, efficient at scale, and minimally reliant on labeled supervision. With a growing publication record, international experience, and teaching background, he is well-positioned to make significant contributions to both academia and applied AI research.

Publications 📚

  1. 📄 Missing data as augmentation in the Earth Observation domain: A multi-view learning approach
    Neurocomputing, 2025-07
    DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2025.130175
    👥 Francisco Mena, Diego Arenas, Andreas Dengel

  2. 🌾 Adaptive fusion of multi-modal remote sensing data for optimal sub-field crop yield prediction
    Remote Sensing of Environment, 2025-03
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114547
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  3. 🛰️ Common Practices and Taxonomy in Deep Multiview Fusion for Remote Sensing Applications
    IEEE JSTARS, 2024
    DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2024.3361556
    👥 Francisco Mena, Diego Arenas, Marlon Nuske, Andreas Dengel

  4. 📉 Impact Assessment of Missing Data in Model Predictions for Earth Observation Applications
    IGARSS Proceedings, 2024
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS53475.2024.10640375
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  5. 🛰️ Assessment of Sentinel-2 Spatial and Temporal Coverage Based on the Scene Classification Layer
    IGARSS 2024, 2024-07-07
    DOI: 10.1109/igarss53475.2024.10642213
    👥 Cristhian Sanchez, Francisco Mena et al.

  6. 🌽 Crop Yield Prediction: An Operational Approach to Crop Yield Modeling on Field and Subfield Level with ML Models
    IGARSS 2023
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10283302
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  7. 🧩 Feature Attribution Methods for Multivariate Time-Series Explainability in Remote Sensing
    IGARSS 2023
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10282120
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  8. 🧹 Influence of Data Cleaning Techniques on Sub-Field Yield Predictions
    IGARSS 2023
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10282955
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  9. 🗂️ A Comparative Assessment of Multi-View Fusion Learning For Crop Classification
    IGARSS 2023, 2023-07-16
    DOI: 10.1109/igarss52108.2023.10282138
    👥 Francisco Mena, Diego Arenas, Marlon Nuske, Andreas Dengel

  10. 📊 Predicting Crop Yield with Machine Learning: Input Modalities and Models on Field and Sub-Field Level
    IGARSS 2023, 2023-07-16
    DOI: 10.1109/igarss52108.2023.10282318
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.