Zakia Hammal, PhD
Research Associate (RI, CMU)

 

Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh,

PA 15213

 

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/

E-mail: zakia_hammal@yahoo.fr

 

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Education

PhD in Cognitive Science.

Master of Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic (specialisation: Image processing).

Engineer in Computer Science (Specialisation: Computer systems).

 

Research

My research focuses on the understanding of human-human social interaction for the development of an automatic and multimodal affective human-machine interaction system, similar to everyday life human-human social communication. My main research includes computer vision, machine learning and visual perception applied to human-machine interaction. I am particularly motivated by medical-context applications such as pain monitoring and the development of pain assessment tools for individuals who are not able to communicate pain verbally. My current work includes dynamic recognition of facial expressions in video sequences, pain and depressed behavior assessment and human-human social behavior applied to human-machine interaction.

 

News

• Merlin Teodosia Suarez and I are organizing the 2nd International Workshop on "Context Based Affect Recognition CBAR2013” at the 2013 AAAI/IEEE Humaine Association Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2013) (http://www.acii2013.org/).

      CFP:  http://cbar2013.blogspot.com/

 

• Our Paper titled “Temporal Coordination of Head Motion in Couples with History of Interpersonal Violence” was accepted for FG2013.

• Our Paper titled “Automatic Detection of Pain Intensity” won the prize of Outstanding Paper at ICMI 2012.

• Merlin Teodosia Suarez and I are organizing the 1st International Workshop on "Context Based Affect Recognition CBAR2012" at the 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom2012: http://www.asesite.org/conferences/socialcom/2012/index.html).

• June-July 2012, Invited researcher to the Center for Empathic Human-Computer Interactions De La Salle University.  

• I am organising a special session on "Belief Functions for Human Behavior Analysis and Interpretation" for BELIEF2012

• The 2nd International Workshop on Emphatic Computing ( IWEC-11)

• The FG 2011 Facial Expression Recognition and Analysis Challenge (FERA2011)

• Moving soon to the Robotics Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University.

• Awarded an SSPNet scholarship to attend the Summer School on Affective Computing and Social Signal Processing (ACSSP10).

• Book Advances in Face Image Analysis: Techniques and Technologies, Y. Zhang (eds.).(IGI Global, 2010)

 

 

Research interests

• Segmentation and analysis of facial features, 

• Analysis and recognition of facial expressions,

• Analysis and recognition of vocal expressions,

• Context-sensitive facial expression recognition (Pain monitoring),

• Data fusion by the Transferable Belief Model,

• Gaze direction and vigilance estimation,

• Visual Perception: Face perception and Music reading.

 

SKills

• Signal processing, Image processing,

• Classification (Neural network, HMM, Bayesian model, SVM),

• Data fusion. 

 

Professional Activities

      Workshop  Organization:

·      Workshop Chair with Merlin Teodosia Suarez of the 2nd International Workshop on "Context Based Affect Recognition CBAR2013” at the 2013 AAAI/IEEE Humaine Association Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2013) (http://www.acii2013.org/).

·      Workshop Chair with Merlin Teodosia Suarez of the 1st International Workshop on "Context Based Affect Recognition CBAR2012" at the 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom2012: http://www.asesite.org/conferences/socialcom/2012/index.html)

Reviewing papers for:

• IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing

• IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics - Part B journal

• Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

      • Machine Vision and Applications (Springer)

• The ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems journal

• Image and Vision Computing (Elsevier)

• International Journal of Approximate Reasoning (Elsevier)

• Information Fusion Journal

• Machine Vision and Applications (Springer)

      • International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (CSC IJHCI)

Program Committee Member: FERA11, IWEC-11,..., ICMI-12, ICME-13, ACII-13, ICMI-13, VDNC-13, AFFINE-13, HBU-13, EmotiW-13    

     Society/Network Membership

        Member of IEEE.

        Member of ACM.

 

Previous Link

zhammal

 

Database:

Hammal-Caplier database:  21 different subjects with 3 sequences per subject (Smile, Surprise and Disgust). Each sequence is recorded during 5 seconds. For each different acquisition the subject is asked to simulate one expression beginning by the Neutral expression, evolving to the considered expression and coming back to the Neutral expression.

 

Ref: Hammal Z., Couvreur L., Caplier A., Rombaut M. Facial Expressions Classification: A new approach based on Transferable Belief Model.  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPROXIMATE REASONING. 46(3):542-567, 2007).  

Contact: zakia_hammal@yahoo.fr

 

Publications

 

PhD Thesis in Cognitive Science

Zakia Hammal Facial Features Segmentation, Analysis and Recognition of Facial Expressions (EURASIP 2006).

 

Book Chapters  

Z. Hammal and C. Massot, Gabor-like Image Filtering for Transient Feature Detection and Global Energy Estimation Applied to Multi-Expression Classification. Pages 135-153. In "Communications in Computer and Information Science" (CCIS 229)  (eds. P. Richard and J. Braz, Springer, CCIS 229, 2011) 

 

Z. Hammal. Chapter 12: From Face to Facial Expression. Pages 217-238. In "Advances in Face Image Analysis: Techniques and Technologies", Yu-Jin Zhang    (eds. IGI Global 2010).

 

LN Computer Science Papers  

Z. Hammal.  Efficient Detection of Consecutive Facial Expression Apexes Using Biologically Based Log-Normal Filters. in ADVANCES IN VISUAL COMPUTING. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011, Volume 6939/2011, pages 586-595, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-24028-7_54  (LNCS 2011).

 

Z. Hammal Context based Recognition of Pain Expression Intensities.  The 5th Workshop on Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction - Real World Challenges -held at the 23rd BCS HCI Group conference.  Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, September 2009. 8 Pages (Oral presentation).  ISBN 978-3-8396-0088-7,  (Fraunhofer VERLAG, 2010), 

 

Hammal Z., Massot C. Dynamic Facial Expression Classification Based on Human Visual Cues Information. Workshop series: Emotion and Computing – Current Research and Future Impact-held in the framework of the 32nd Annual Conference on
Artificial Intelligence KI 2009.  10 Pages (Oral presentation). (LNCS, 2009) 

 

Z. Hammal, A. Martin and F. Gosselin Comparing a Transferable Belief Model Capable of Recognizing Facial Expressions with the Latest Human Data. in ADVANCES IN VISUAL COMPUTING. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007, Volume 4841/2007, pages 509-520, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-76858-6_50  (LNCS 2007)   

 

Hammal Z., Massot C., Bedoya G., Caplier A.  Eyes Segmentation Applied to Gaze Direction and Vigilance Estimation.  PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005, Volume 3687/2005, pages 236-246, DOI: 10.1007/11552499_27(LNCS 2005). 

 

Hammal Z., Couvreur L., Caplier A., Rombaut M.  Facial Expressions Recognition Based on The Belief Theory: Comparison with Diferent Classifiers. IMAGE ANALYSIS AND PROCESSING. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005, Volume 3617/2005, pages 743-752, DOI: 10.1007/11553595_91 (LNCS 2005)   

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A., Rombaut M  Belief Theory Applied to Facial Expressions Classification. PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS.Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005, Volume 3687/2005, pages 183-191, DOI: 10.1007/11552499_21 (LNCS 2005)

 

Journal Papers

Hammal, Z., Gosselin, F., Peretz, I., & Hébert, S. Music to my eyes: Spatial frequencies mediating music reading

 

Z. Hammal.  Log-Gabor Descriptors for Temporal Facial Expression Analysis: Emotional Segments Detection and Facial Features Extraction.

 

Z. Hammal and M. Kunz. Pain Monitoring: A Dynamic and Context-sensitive System Pattern Recognition, 2011. Volume 45, Issue 4, April 2012, Pages 1265-1280 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2011.09.014

 

Hammal Z., M. Arguin, and F. Gosselin. Comparing a Novel Model Based on the Transferable Belief Model with Humans During the Recognition of Partially Occluded Facial Expressions. December 2008 (Journal of Vision), 9(2):22, 1-19, http://journalofvision.org/9/2/22/, doi:10.1167/9.2.22.   

 

Hammal Z., Couvreur L., Caplier A., Rombaut M. Facial Expressions Classification: A new approach based on Transferable Belief Model.  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPROXIMATE REASONING (Elsevier). 46(3):542-567, 2007, [PDF].   

 

Z. Hammal, N. Eveno, A. Caplier, and P-Y Coulon  Parametric models for facial features segmentation.  (Signal processing), vol 86 , pp 399-413, 2006 [PDF].  

 

Hammal Z., Eveno N, Caplier A., Coulon P.-Y Extraction des traits caracteristiques du visage à l'aide de modèle paramétriques adaptés. Traitement du signal (TS 2005),vol 22, num 01, pp 59-71, 2005. PDF Selected as from the best papers of the 19ème colloque sur le traitemant du signal et des images Gretsi 2003.

 

Proceeding Papers

     

     Hammal Z., Cohn J-F., Bailie T., George D-T.,Saraghi, J., Chiquero J-N., & Lucey., S. Temporal Coordination of

     Head Motion in Couples with History of Interpersonal Violence. The 10th International Conference on 

     Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, FG2013, Shanghai, China,  April 22-26, 201.

 

Hammal, Z., Cohn, J-F, Automatic Detection of Pain Intensity.

      14th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction ICMI 2012. Oct 22-26, santa Monica, CA, USA.  

      Outstanding Paper Award.

 

Hammal Z., Massot C. Holistic and Feature-Based Information Towards Dynamic Multi-Expressions Recognition. Selected as from the best papers of VISAPP 2010, to be published in the book ("Communications in Computer and Information Science" (CCIS) published by LNCS Springer-Verlag).

 

Z. Hammal, F. Gosselin, I.Peretz and S. Hebert. Spatial Frequencies Mediating Music Reading. Proc. Vision Science Society (VSS 2010). 7-12 May 2010 Naples Grand Hotel, Floride (JoV 2010), [PDF].

 

Z. Hammal, F. Gosselin and I. Fortin How efficient are the recognition of dynamic and static facial expressions? Proc. Vision Science Society (VSS 2009). 9-14 May 2009 Naples Grand Hotel, Floride (JoV 2009) [PDF]   

 

Z. Hammal, M. Kunz, M. Arguin, and F. Gosselin. Spontaneous Pain Expression Recognition in Video Sequences. Proc. BCS Int’l Conf. on Visions of Computer Science (BCS-Visions 2008). Imperial College London September 22-24, 2008, 20 pages (oral presentation). Selected as from the best papers of the BCS-Visions 2008.   

 

Z. Hammal, N. Tsuchiya, R. Adolphs, M. Arguin, P. G. schyns and F. Gosselin. What does the activity in the Amygdala and the Insula correlate with in fearful and disgusted faces. Proc. Vision Science Society (VSS 2008). 9-14 May 2008, Naples Grand Hotel, Floride (oral presentation) (JoV 2008)   

 

S. Roy, C. Roy, Z. Hammal, D. Fiset, C.Blais, B. Jemel, F. Gosselin. The use of Spatio-temporal Information in decoding facial expression of emotions. Proc. Vision Science Society (VSS 2008). 9-14 May 2008, Naples Grand Hotel, Floride (Poster) (JoV 2008)   

 

C. Roy, S. Roy, D. Fiset,, Z. Hammal, P. Rainvill, F. Gosselin. Recognizing static and dynamic facial expressions of Pain: Gaze-tracking and Bubbles experiments. Proc. Vision Science Society (VSS 2008). 9-14 May 2008, Naples Grand Hotel, Floride (Poster) (JoV 2008)

 

I. Buciu, Z. Hammal, A. Caplier, N. Nikolaidis and I. Pitas Enhencing Facial Expression Classification By Information Fusion. Proc. 14 th European Signal Processing Conference (Eusipco 2006), 5 pages (oral presentation).

 

Z. Hammal Dynamic facial expression understanding based on temporal modeling of transferable belief model. Proc. International conference on computer vision theory and application. (Visapp 2006).25-28 February 2006, Setubal, Portugal. PDF. 12 pages (oral presentation).

 

Hammal Z., Bozkurt B., Couvreur L., Unay D., Caplier A., Dutoit T  Passive versus Active: Vocal Classification System. Proc. 13 th European Signal Processing Conference. (EUSIPCO 2005). Turkey ,PDF, 4 pages (oral presentation).

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A., Rombaut M. A fusion process based on belief theory for classification of facial basic emotions. Proc. IEEE Fusion'2005 the 8th International Conference on Information fusion. (ICIF2005) ,PDF, 8 pages (oral presentation) (link).

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A.  Eyes and eyebrows parametric models for automatic segmentation. Proc. IEEE Southhwest Symposium on Image Analysis and Interpretation. (IEEE) (SSIAI04). Turkey ,PDF, 4 pages , oral presentation (link).

 

Hammal Z., Bozkurt B., Couvreur L., Unay D., Caplier A., Dutoit T  Classification bimodale d'expressons vocales. 20ème colloque sur le traitemant du signal et des images (Gretsi'2005), Louvain-la-Neuve , belgique, Septembre 2005.

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A., Rombaut M. Classification d'expressions faciales par la theorie de l'évidence. Rencontre Francophones sur la Logique Floue et ses Applications (LFA2004), Nantes, 18-19 Nouvembre 2004 PDF.

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A. Analyse dynamique des transformations des traits du visage lors de la production d'une emotion. Atelier sur l'analyse du geste (RFIA 2004), Toulouse, 2004 <[PDF]-

 

Hammal Z., Eveno N., Caplier A., Coulon P.-Y  Extraction réaliste des traits caractéristiques du visage à l'aide de modèles paramétriques adaptés . 19ème colloque sur le traitemant du signal et des images (Gretsi'2003), Paris, Septembre 2003 PDF. Selected as from the 10 best papers of GRETSI 2003 to be published in the Journal Traitement du signal.

 

Official Seminars and Invited Talks

Z. Hammal,

Automatic affect Recognition

Invited speaker to Bell Canada, Montreal, 20 September, 2010.

 

Z. Hammal

Music to my eyes: spatial frequencies mediating music reading.

Invited speaker to the prestigious seminars of CERNEC, university of Montreal, 17 Septembre 2010.

 

Z. Hammal,

Automatic Analysis and Interpretation of Human Facial Behavior,

Invited speaker, McGill University, 23 Juin 2010, Montréal.

Host: Jeremy Cooperstock

 

Z. Hammal,

Segmentation et Interprétation d'indices Visuels pour la Reconnaissance Séquentielle des Expressions Faciales.  

Invited speaker, Institut TELECOM - TELECOM ParisTech. 27 May 2010, Paris, France.

Host: Catherine Pelachaud.

 

Z. Hammal.

The Computer Sciences Laboratory for Mechanics and Engineering Sciences (CNRS-LIMSI), 25 Mai 2010, Paris, France.

Host: Jean-Claude Martin.

 

Z. Hammal, F. Gosselin, I. Peretz, S. Hébert

Spatial Frequencies Mediating Music and Text Reading

BRAMS Annual Scientific Day, BRAMS April 2010, Montreal, Canada.

 

Z. Hammal,

Du visage à l'expression: segmentation et interprétation d'indices visuels pour la reconnaissance des expressions faciales.  

Invited speaker to the Conference “Statistiques pour le Traitement de l'Image”. 11-12 March 2010 université d’Evry, Paris, France.

 

Z. Hammal, F. Gosselin, I. Peretz, S. Hébert

Spatial Frequencies Mediating Music Reading

BRAMS Annual Scientific Day, BRAMS May 2009, Montreal, Canada.

 

Hammal Z., Arguin M., Gosselin F

Comparing a Transferable Belief Model Capable of Recognizing Facial Expressions With Human Data.

La 17ième Journée Scientifique du CERNEC Plasticité et réorganisation cérébrale, CERNEC April 2008, Montreal, Canada

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A., Rombaut M.

Invited speaker to the seminars of Laboratoire des Systèmes Complexes (LSC), 21 April 2005, 

Université d’Evry, France.

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A., Rombaut M.

Classification des expressions faciales par la théorie de l’évidence.

Oral talk at the “Réunion Française  sur les Fonctions de Croyance”, 23-24 March, 2005, Compiègne, France

 

      Hammal Z., Caplier A., Rombaut M.

Reconnaissance d’expressions faciales en utilisant la théorie de l’évidence.

Oral talk at the GDR ISIS, 20  January, 2005, Paris, France.

 

Hammal Z., Caplier A.

Segmentation des contours des yeux et des sourcils dans des séquences vidéo.

Oral talk at the GDR ISIS, 17 July 2003, Grenoble, France.