Teaching
Courses, mentorship, and educational philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy rests on a precise equation: rigorous academic demands paired with genuine care for the student, extended in many cases into long term friendship. I believe university students instinctively know who truly has their best interests at heart, thus I always make it clear that my high expectations stem from investment in their growth, not from a desire to overwhelm them. What drives me is the real, lasting impact a course leaves on a student's skills and knowledge.
Read full article on the BlogGraduate Student Supervision
Lina Khalid Hasan Al-Okran
MScThesis: BCValor: A Multimodal Vision-Language Model for Enhanced Breast Cancer Detection and Diagnosis
Field of Interest: Multimodal Vision-Language Models for Medical Imaging
University of Jeddah · 2025 – Present
This study aims to improve breast cancer diagnosis by developing advanced multimodal vision-language models (VLMs) that integrate both imaging data and textual clinical reports. The research focuses on surpassing the current state-of-the-art performance in BI-RADS breast cancer classification by leveraging novel fusion strategies and attention mechanisms. Three models will be developed and compared: an image-only model, a text-only model, and a VLM that combines both modalities. A systematic evaluation will be conducted using standardised metrics such as accuracy, AUC, and F1 score to ensure a fair comparison across models. The study will also explore the impact of different fusion techniques, including a proposed attention-based fusion method, on model performance. The placement of attention mechanisms at various model layers will be investigated to optimise feature alignment and enhance classification outcomes. Computational costs — including GPU usage, training time, and memory consumption — will be recorded to assess the practical feasibility of deploying these models. The findings are expected to demonstrate that VLMs significantly outperform single-modality models, providing valuable insights for the development of more effective AI-assisted diagnostic tools in breast cancer detection.
Keywords
Senior Projects Supervision
2025-2026
BASL: A Bidirectional Arabic Sign Language Translator
Arabic Sign Language Recognition and Generation
SP1: Fall 2025-2026 · SP2: Winter 2025-2026
Team
A bidirectional mobile application enabling two-way communication between Arabic Sign Language (ArSL) users and the wider Arabic-speaking community. The app translates ArSL into written or spoken Arabic using a Vision Transformer (ViT) pipeline with 3D CNNs and attention-based Transformers, and converts Arabic text or speech into sign-language video using SMPL-X 3D avatar animations. Trained on the Isharah dataset (30,000+ annotated Saudi Sign Language clips), supported by the SDAIA-KFUPM Joint AI Research Centre.
Keywords
2024-2025
ROP Diagnosis using Deep Learning
Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis
SP2: Fall 2024-2025
Team
An automated system for diagnosing and classifying Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) — a potentially blinding eye disorder affecting premature infants. The system uses Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) trained on annotated fundus images to identify ROP stages, evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and AUC-ROC metrics.
Keywords
2023-2024
Your Academic Advisor: AI-Based Academic Scheduling System
AI-Based Academic Scheduling Optimisation
SP1: Winter 2023-2024 · SP2: Fall 2024-2025
Team
An intelligent academic scheduling system that addresses conflicts in student, faculty, and administrative scheduling at university level. OR-Tools is used for initial schedule generation, refined by a Proximal Policy Optimisation (PPO) reinforcement learning agent for adaptability and efficiency.
Keywords
Brain-Computer Interface (BCI): EEG-Based Computer Control
Brain-Computer Interfaces and EEG Signal Processing
SP1: Winter 2023-2024
Team
A BCI system that uses EEG signals captured via OpenBCI to help users with physical disabilities control computers through brain waves. The system interprets yes/no responses without speech, using SVM (84% accuracy) and ANN (90% accuracy) models trained on EEG recordings.
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Graduate Courses
Research Methods in Computing
University of Jeddah · Winter 2024-2025 | Fall 2025-2026 | Winter 2025-2026
Graduate-level course covering research methodology, academic writing, literature review, and scientific publication in computing and AI fields.
Undergraduate Courses
Advanced Topics in AI
University of Jeddah · Fall 2025-2026 | Winter 2025-2026
Special topics course exploring frontier areas of AI. Current offering: Entrepreneurship in Data Science and AI — covering the entrepreneurial ecosystem, digital innovation, business model development, startup strategies, and real-world applications of data science and AI. Based on the Saudi Ministry of Education's Entrepreneurship Capability Development Initiative (McGraw-Hill, 2024).
Machine Learning
University of Jeddah · Winter 2024-2025 | Winter 2025-2026
Foundations and algorithms of machine learning including supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning methods.
Deep Learning
University of Jeddah · Winter 2023-2024 | Fall 2024-2025
Advanced deep learning architectures, training strategies, and real-world applications in computer vision and medical AI.
Operating Systems
University of Jeddah · Winter 2017-2018
Principles of operating systems including process management, memory management, file systems, and concurrency.
Artificial Intelligence
University of Jeddah · Winter 2016-2017
Core concepts in AI including search, knowledge representation, reasoning, planning, and machine learning.
Applied Math for Computing
King Abdulaziz University / University of Jeddah · Fall 2011-2012
Lab sessions covering discrete mathematics, linear algebra, and mathematical foundations for computer science.
Computer Organization and Architecture
King Abdulaziz University / University of Jeddah · Fall 2011-2012
Lab sessions covering computer organization, digital logic, assembly language, and computer architecture fundamentals.
Interested in Research Supervision?
I welcome inquiries from students interested in pursuing research under my supervision.
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