Dr. Ayman Elmesalami

Master Lecturer & University Distinguished Teacher, Old Dominion University

Undergraduate Program Director, CS-ODU

Ph.D., 2004, Kansas State University

Contact Information

Work & Teaching Experience

• Old Dominion University, US
• Kansas State University, US
• University of Guelph, Canada
• University of Guelph Humber, Canada
• McMaster University, Canada
• University of Waterloo, Canada
• College of the Rockies, Canada
• Durham College, Canada
• Remote Sensing & Space Sciences, Ministry of Hig. Ed. & Sc. Research, Egypt

Teaching (96 - 22)

Awards & Grants

• University Distinguished Teacher, ODU
• Teaching with Technology Award, ODU
• Best Teaching Award, College of Sciences, ODU
• UG Teaching Award, UoGuelph
• Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award, CoS
• Faculty Innovator Grant, ODU
• College of Sciences Undergraduate Research Program, ODU

Services

• Judge of the Great Computer Challenge (GCC) - a joint project of WHRO, the Consortium for Interactive Instruction and Old Dominion University
• Judge of the University Teaching with Technology Award at Old Dominion University
• Judge of the College Royale Roboticon event at University of Guelph
• Cahir of the CS Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, ODU
• College of Sciences representative for the University Interdisciplinary Studies committee, ODU
• Member of the College of Science Undergraduate Curriculum Committee
• Member of the College Strategic Planning Committee - Undergraduate Affair
• Member of the Teaching Faculty Hiring Committee
• Mentor for the New Teaching Faculty at the CS Department
• Advisor of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) at ODU
• Advisor of the Muslim Students Association at ODU
• Assisted to obtain ABET accreditation at the CS Department at ODU
• Active Participant in the College of Sciences Admitted Student Day
• Active Participant in the Scholars Day at ODU
• Active Participant in the General Education Assessment Summit (assessed the GE information literacy courses at ODU including, IT150G, STEM251G, HLTH 120G, and CS 120G/121G)
• Active Participant in the Egyptian Embassy Conference of Education Accreditation & Quality Assurance in Developing Countries, @ the Egyptian Embassy in Montreal, Canada
• Reviewer for the CS Adjunct Pool at ODU
• Session Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology (EIT), Windsor, Ontario, Canada
• Volunteered multiple Saturdays to meet with newly admitted students at ODU
• Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local Unit 3913 at the University of Guelph, negotiating the collective agreements, Guelph-Humber CUPE representative, and health & safety officer (2009-2012)
• Reviewer of the Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering Journal, International Journal of Neural Systems, Computers and Electrical Engineering Journal (Elsevier), and the IEEE International Conference on Electro & Information Technology

Raspberry Pi Programming & Undergraduate Research Projects

• Introductory Projects and Tutorials (Report, Prest, Demo, Connecting the Pi & Breadboard - CanaKit)
• Tiny Computers Make a Big Impact on Learning (ODU News, the Center for Faculty Development - an article in the Fact Sheet)
• Faculty Summer Institute (CLT- Poster)
• The Raspberry Pi Programming Contest (Fall 2020, Fall 2021), Fall 2022)
• Winner Projects RasPi Programming Contest (Fall 2020, Fall 2021)
• Undergraduate Research Symposium (ODU 2021)
• Connecting Vintage 1984 Apple Macintosh Computer to the Modern Era of Internet using RasPi (Prest & Demo)
• Cryptography with Raspberry Pi (Prest & Demo)
• Undergraduate Research Opportunity (Summer 2021)
• COVID-19 Class Room Seating Project - Stephanie (Report, Prest, Demo)
• Parking Control & Class Seating Projects - Ioannis (Prest, Demo)
• Parking Control - Nathan (Poster, Demo)
• Exploring Parallelization with a Cluster of the Raspberry Pi (Prest & Demo, PP Prest, Report)
• Snake Game with Raspberry Pi (Prest & Demo, Play-Demo #1, Play-Demo #2,, Play-Demo #3, PP Prest, PP Prest #2)
• Voice-Aid for Blind and Visually Impaired People (Prest & Demo, PP Prest, Poster)
• Diabetic Foot Exam System (Prest & Demo, PP Prest)
• Flooding Detection in Hampton Roads Project -Nauman (Prest, Demo)
• Flooding Detection in Hampton Roads Project -Gabriel (Prest, Demo1, Demo2)
• Automatic Trash Level Detection with Raspberry Pi (Report, Demo)
• Low-Cost Hand & Fingers Physical Therapy System - for people who suffer from conditions affecting the extremities. The therapy focuses on the finger joints and helps recovering the normal function. The RasPi offers a low-cost, light weight, small size, and efficient system. -Ben (Demo)
• Unreal Engine with Arduino. The project is a game of a shoot house with a group of randomly positioned AI around the level that are stationary. The program detects and reacts to the AI character when it is visible - Dakota Dawe (Demo)
• Arcade Custom Controller and Emulation Machine - Sean Allgaier (Setting, Demo)
• Virtual Personal Assistant with Raspberry Pi - Zavier Basnight (Demo)
• Keeping Up with The Critters -Cody (Demo)
• COVID-19 Crowd Detection -Aly/Mustafa (Demo)
• Undergraduate Summer Research - Students' Testimonial (Gabriel, Stephanie, Nathan, Brennen, Cody)
• UG Student Poster at the ODU Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, the (COVID-19 Classroom Occupancy Detection System)
• UG Student Poster at the ODU Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, the (Automatic Costal Flood Detection in Norfolk City)
• UG Student Poster at the ODU Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, the Movement Controlled Snake Game)
• UG Student Poster at the ODU Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, the (Diabetic Foot Exam System)
• IEEE "LWMOOCS" - Incorporating Hands-on Raspberry Pi Projects in Undergraduate Education (Publication from in-class UG research)
• IEEE "EIT" - Teaching UG Engineering and Computer Science Students Concepts with Raspberry Pi (Student publication from summer project)
• IEEE "ISTEM Ed." - Project-Based Exploration of the Cluster Computing and Parallelization Using Raspberry Pis, Princeton University, NJ (UG Student publication at IEEE STEM Ed. conference, The Student talk at the IEEE Conference)
• Springer Nature - Color Restoration Survey from Faded Images - students review of 108 papers (Survey paper - student publication from in-class research)

Student Mentoring & UG Summer Research

• Taylor Powell, I supervised his Project for the UG Programming Competition, Exploring Parallelization with Cluster with a Cluster of the Raspberry Pi. won 1st award for the junior/senior ODU students in the contest. The preliminary results from this work were presented at the Undergraduate Symposium, in 2022 at ODU & at the final results from this project was published in the IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference at Princeton University, in 2022.
• Gabriel Del Razo, UG summer research, Automatic Costal Flood Detection in Norfolk City. The student developed a vision system controlled by the Raspberry Pi. The system automatically detects the flood levels of low, moderate, and severe. The student learned image processing concepts and how digital devices interpret an image, extract information from the image, and make a decision.
• Nathan Potter, UG summer research, ODU Automatic Parking Control during Big Events. The student developed a system to control parking, display a list of partially filled lots, block filled lots, and automate the collection of fees. The objectives are minimizing the check in time, balancing numbers of cars in lots, and allow easy access to the emergency vehicles.
• Stephanie Trusty, UG summer research, COVID-19 Classroom Seating Project to automate the process of detecting seating violations, warning students within the violation vicinity, notifying the instructor, and keeping the instructions running with minimal disturbance.
• Devin Haslam, MS writing a review paper. The paper included a review of 108 references. The paper is published in Springer Nature in 2019. The student completed this work as a final project for the image processing class, CS595 which the student completed under my supervision in 2018.
• Hussam Hallak, TA/PhD writing a survey paper to study the impact of incorporating hands-on projects on the undergraduate education at ODU and boosting students’ Interest in science and engineering majors. The study focused on women and minorities and how to encourage them to advance their studies in practical fields. This paper was published in the IEEE - LWMOOCS conference in 2019.
• Taylor Powell, I supervised his Project for the UG Programming Competition, Encryption and Decryption with a Raspberry Pi, won 1st award in the contest. The students developed a program to allow the user to explore a number of historically encryption and decryption methods. This work was also presented at the Undergraduate Symposium, March 2021 at ODU.
• Justin Luckenbach, I supervised his Project for the UG Programming Competition, Connecting a 1984 Vintage Macintosh Computer to the Modern Era, won 2nd award in the contest. This work was also presented at the Undergraduate Symposium, March 2021 at ODU.
• Hermab Pendyala, MS summer research project, Building a Cluster of the Raspberry Pi tiny computers. We proposed this type of clusters as a low-cost tool for teaching concepts like, parallel computing to the undergraduate CS students. The performance of the cluster was assessed using face recognition and image encryption, which are computationally expensive. The results from this project was published in the IEEE – EIT conference in 2020.
• Porter Doughty, I supervised his Project for the UG Programming Competition, Building a Snake Game with Raspberry Pi. won 1st award for the freshmen/sophomore ODU students in the contest. This work will be presented at the Undergraduate Symposium, March 2022 at ODU.
• Stephanie Trusty, Diabetic Foot Exam System - A 3-minute professional evaluation to identify a diabetic patient’s risk of foot ulceration. Exam components include, patient history, dermatological assessment, musculoskeletal assessment, and neurological assessment. The project goals are dermatological assessment (Calluses & Blisters) and Musculoskeletal Assessment of foot deformities (Clawtoe, Hammertoe, Bunion)
• Manish Reddy & Venugopal Nagandla, I supervised his Project for the UG Programming Competition, RasPi-Voice-Aid for blind and visually impaired people, won 1st award for the MS ODU students in the contest
• Cody Bonham, UG summer research, Keeping Up with The Critters use the Raspberry Pi to track the number of times and when the door of a squirrel feeder is opened.
• Mustafa Ibrahim, Aly Zeineldin, Yameen Khan , UG summer research, COVID-19 Automatic Crowd Detection
• Brennen Gabriel, UG summer research, Home Security System with Raspberry Pi
• Porter Doughty, UG summer research, Automaic Facial Recognition & Classroom Sign-in with Raspberry Pi
• Benjamin Paul, UG summer research, Low-Cost Hand & Fingers Physical Therapy System - for people who suffer from conditions affecting the extremities. The therapy focuses on the finger joints and helps recovering the normal function. The RasPi offers a low-cost, light weight, small size, and efficient system.
• Dakota Dawe, Unreal Engine with Arduino, game project of a shoot house with a group of randomly positioned AI around the map each time. When the AI character is detected, a signal is sent through the set COM port corresponding to a function call on the Arduino to fire, reset1 or reset2. The fire signal “pulls the trigger and reset”, reset1 signal “resets the trigger at a prepped position, slightly pulling the trigger”, and rest2 signal “opens the servo to a rotation that is completely off the trigger for easy removal”. The first signal is sent when the AI is shot, the second signal is sent when the player load into the game, and the last is sent when the AI character is no longer active. The project adds more power to the game, precisely detects and reacts to the randomly position AI character. The project can simply be modified and applied to other types of game to add more power.
• Sean Allgaier, Arcade Custom Controller and Emulation Machine. The project is a custom arcade styled controller running on a Raspberry Pi Pico and a retro arcade emulation station running on a Raspberry Pi 4b. The emulation station uses the Recal-Box OS, which allows to emulate the retro video game consoles and arcade machines. The wood controller uses a traditional arcade joystick by Sanwa. The buttons on the controller have built-in LEDs and are made by Paradise Arcade and EG STARTS.
• Zavier Basnight, Virtual Personal Assistant with Raspberry Pi. The project involved recording input human’s speech, saving into a file on the RasPI memory, automatically recognizing the authorized voice with RasPi, filtering the speech to remove all words and only keep the detected commands. The commands are compared to a Database of many commands, and the recognized commands are displayed on the screen or sent to a speaker to alert the user before executing the command. If the program fails to recognize a command, it asks the user to repeat the command sound until it is correctly recognized. The Virtual Personal Assistant allows users to receive current time, date, weather information, search the Internet, send emails, open files, etc. This application is very helpful for human with movement disability.

Selected Publications

• STEM Ed. - Project-Based Exploration of the Cluster Computing and Parallelization Using Raspberry Pis, The 12th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, US, March 2022.
• STEM Ed. - The Raspberry Pi Education Mine: For Teaching Engineering and Computer Science Students Concepts Like, Computer Clusters, Parallel Computing, and Distributed Computing, IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology, Rochester, IL, US, July, 2020
• STEM Ed. - The Impact of Incorporating Hands-on Raspberry Pi Projects with Undergraduate Education in Boosting Students’ Interest in Scientific/Engineering Majors and Encouraging Women and Minorities to Advance their Integration in Practical Fields, the IEEE - LWMOOCS conference in Milwaukee, WI, US, October 2019
• Color Restoration Survey and an Overdetermined System for Color Retrieval from Faded Images, Recent Advances in Engineering Mathematics and Physics, published by “Springer Nature”, 2019
• ODU Undergraduate Students Addressing the Societal Problems of Parking Control, Classroom Seating, and Flood Monitoring in Hampton Roads, The Undergraduate Research Journal at Old Dominion University, 2022
• Programming is Fun with tiny, credit card size computers, a poster published at the CLT faculty summer conference at ODU in May 2019
• Movement Controlled Snake Game, the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at ODU, March 2022, Norfolk, VA.
• Parallelization with a RasPi Cluster, the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at ODU, March 2022, Norfolk, VA.
• COVID-19 Classroom Occupancy Detection System, the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at ODU, March 2022, Norfolk, VA.
• Diabetic Foot Exam System, the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at ODU, March 2022, Norfolk, VA.
• Automatic Costal Flood Detection in Norfolk City, the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at ODU, March 2022, Norfolk, VA.
• Raspberry Pi Connects the 1984 Apple Macintosh Vintage Computer to the Modern Era of Internet, the Undergraduate Symposium, March 2021, Old Dominion University, VA, US.
• Encryption & Decryption with Raspberry Pi, the Undergraduate Symposium, March 2021, Old Dominion University, VA, US.
• Automatic Detection of the Main Vine and Branches of Tomato Plants Grown in Greenhouses, IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology, EIT, Rochester, MI, USA, May, 2018
• Color Restoration of Old Photos Using the Curvelet Transform, The 7th International Conference on Computer Engineering & Systems, ICCES, Cairo, Egypt, Nov., 2012
• Enhanced Frequency Pattern of the 2-D Hartley Transform for a New Crop-Resilient Image Transform, Journal of Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, Vol. 17, No. 1, Jan. 2010
• Automatic Color Retrieval Using the Retinex and its Max White Intrinsic Property, The 7th International Conference on Informatics and Systems, INFOS, Cairo, Egypt, March, 2010
• The Max White Effect on the Gray World White-Balancing Algorithm, Visualization, Imaging and Image Processing Conference, VIIP, Cambridge, UK, 13-19 July, 2009
• Crop Resilient Image Transform, Visualization, Imaging and Image Processing Conference, VIIP, Cambridge, UK, 13-19 July, 2009
• Color Restoration Techniques for Faded Colors of Old Photos, Printings and Paintings, IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology, EIT, Windsor, ON, Canada, June, 2009
• New Image Transform for a More Crop-Resilient NPT, IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology, EIT, Windsor, ON, Canada, June, 2009
• Applications of the Naturalness Preserving Transform to Image Watermarking and Data Hiding, Elsevier Digital Signal Processing Journal, Vol. 14, Nov. 2004
• Comparison Between the Cosine and Hartley Based Naturalness Preserving Transform for Image Watermarking and Data Hiding, Proc. 1st Canadian Conf. on Computer and Robot Vision, London, ON, Canada, 2004
• Image Watermarking Using Hartley Based Naturalness Preserving Transform, Proc. JCIS 7th Joint Conf. on Information Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2003
• A Novel Method to Generate the Mask for Data Hiding and Image Watermarking, Proc. Int. Conf. on Signal and Image Processing, Hawaii, 2003
• Image Watermarking Using Fuzzy Logic, Proc. JCIS 7th Joint Conf. on Information Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC, pp. 1495-1498, 2003
• A Modified Naturalness Preserving Transform for Data Hiding and Image Watermarking, Proc. Int. Conf. on Signal and Image Processing, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2003

UG Activities & Projects Demo