Who are you and what do you do? Who are your partners?
My name is Fadi Boutros. I received my master’s degree in “Distributed Software Systems” from TU Darmstadt (February 2019) and my Ph.D. in computer science from TU Darmstadt (June 2022). I authored and co-authored several conference papers and journal papers during my work on my Ph.D. and Master’s thesis. My main research interests lie in the fields of biometrics, machine learning, and efficient deep learning. From 2016 to 2019, I worked as a research assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD, where I also worked on my master thesis dealing with the ethnicity bias problem in face recognition systems. Since 2019 I am working as a scientific researcher at the Fraunhofer IGD. Since February 2022 I am participating in Software Campus. My Software campus project focuses on enabling a wider deployment of deep learning-based biometric solutions in the embedded domains and the use cases that are constrained by the computational capabilities and high throughput requirements, as well as environmental and deployment limitations.
I am working on it with Fraunhofer Institut as a research partner and Software AG as an industry partner.
How long have you been with Software Campus and why are you in the program?
I applied for software campus in spring 2021 and my project has officially started at 01.02.2022. I believe that participating in Software Campus is a strong added value to my current research and it is a great chance to further expand my current research work and to better understanding the industrial needs.
What is the content of your IT project and how could it be applied in the future?
Efficient biometric solutions enable the deployability of the technology in a wider range of applications. Such applications include smart environments, smart vehicles, and personal devices. The efficiency aspect also enables lowering the cost of deployment in existing large-scale deployments. The main objective of this project is to enable wider deployment of deep learning-based biometric solutions in the embedded domains and the use cases that are constrained by the computational capabilities and high throughput requirements, as well as environmental and deployment limitations. The outcomes of this project are planned to have an impact on society, industry, and governmental institutions. The high energy cost of deploying and training conventional deep learning models can have an effect in significantly lowering the energy consumption of running and training these models. Also, developing biometric solutions within a clear privacy-aware framework will increase the social acceptance of the technology. Moreover, building low computaional cost and efficient biometric solutions will further increase the deployability of biometrics in large-scale applications.
Do you have any funny/exciting/surprising/memories associated with computer science? What fascinates you about computer science?
I am fascinated by machine learning and AI as they have a great potential to solve many of our daily life problems from disease diagnosis to autonomous driving, as well as, they lead to breakthroughs in many different fields such as healthcare and education.
What app/technical invention could you not live without?
Internet.
Is there “the” characteristic that you think a top manager must have today in order to be successful?
The characteristics that a top manager must have are: being goal-oriented and confident along with having the ability to communicate with team members.
What has been the biggest challenge you have had to face so far in your IT career?
Working on my Ph.D. was the biggest challenge I had in my IT career so far. For a Ph.D. student, it is very hard to balance work and life as it was common to work on my research during the weekends and late every day.
Imagine: Internet breakdown for 1 month – what do you do?
It will be great chance to have holiday.
If you could reach all people with one sentence, what would you tell the world?
Balance between your life and work and enjoy having a healthy social life and regular sports exercise.
