Kuwait University
College of Life Sciences

Information Science Department
ABET Accredited in General Computing

Department Seminars

Academic Year (2018-2019)

  • Apr 16, 2018: TechTalks by Tariq A. Aldowaisan, Head of the Health Informatics Unit at the Dasman Diabetes Institute (Title: Applications of Quality in Computing and Informatics)
  • Apr 15, 2019: TechTalks by Dr. Abdullah Almutairi (Title: Automatic Visual Truck Identification Using Deep Neural Networks)
  • Mar 18, 2019: TechTalks by Prof. Muhammad Sarfraz (Title: License Plate Recognition Systems)
  • Feb 18, 2019: TechTalks by Prof. Kassem Saleh (Title: On the Intertwining of Quality and Risk in Information System Development and Evolution)
  • Feb 13, 2019: TechTalks by Eng. Majed AlZaabi (Title: My Story with Dr. Abdulrahman AlSumait)
  • Dec 10, 2018: Seminar by Prof. Muhammad Sarfraz (Title: Research & Quality)
  • Oct 31, 2018: Seminar by Dr Saad Alsharrah (Title: A spatial lens for solving real-world problems: a GIS approach)
  • Oct 15, 2018: Seminar by Dr. Dari Alhuwail (Title: FAIR Digital Practices: Guiding Principles for Data Science)
  • Oct 10, 2018: Seminar by Prof. Paul Manuel (Title: ABET Accreditation Preparation)



Seminar Abstracts


Applications of Quality in Computing and Informatics

Prof. Tariq A. Aldowaisan

The meaning of quality has evolved over the last seven decades. The focus was initially on the final product with inspecting out defectives, then it moved to the process with preventing defects through statistical process control, then it moved to management systems with standardized policies and procedures. Today quality is defined as customer delight; a definition that focuses on the desired impact of any business. The objective of this seminar is to explore the potential applications of quality in computing and informatics. The approach is somewhat different. I will engage the participants, the SMEs, to help with identifying potential applications of the main concepts and techniques of quality in computing and informatics. Hope, we both find the experience elating and enlightening.

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Automatic Visual Truck Identification Using Deep Neural Networks

Dr. Abdullah Almutairi

Freight transportation is the physical process of transporting commodities, merchandise goods, and cargo. Trucks are primarily responsible for carrying freight. To better track and model commodity movement through a region, a vision-based classification model was de- veloped to recognize trucks classes, tractor types and trailer categories. The model consists of multiple neural networks each trained to classify a part of the truck with high accuracy. This talk presents the classification model and how it was built. We show results displaying the accuracy of the model on truck images.

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License Plate Recognition Systems

Prof. Muhammad Sarfraz

Real time LPR plays a major role in automatic monitoring of traffic rules and maintaining law enforcement on public roads. There is a growing demand and need for traffic data concerning traffic flow and automatic car identification. This motivates researchers around the world to adopt intelligent computing techniques to monitor and control traffic flow. This talk presents an intelligent License Plate Recognition (LPR) system in a very general setting. Then it covers cases for some countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others. Various challenging situations like dirt on cars, tilted cars, bad light conditions, the quality of input images and distance between the camera and the vehicle are also part of the presentation.

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On the Intertwining of Quality and Risk in Information System Development and Evolution

Prof. Kassem Saleh

The proper dealing with quality and risks is critical for a successful IS development project or ongoing operation and evolution of an IS. However, both quality and risks are strongly intertwined and have to be considered in tandem. Earlier for example, the word risk did not even appear in the ISO 9001 standard on quality. Only in the recent revision of the standard, an emphasis on risk considerations was added. In this talk, we show how quality and risks in information system development and evolution are related. This leads us to develop a quality-based risk taxonomy and risk breakdown structure that can be used as a generic tool to identify risks while developing or maintaining an information system.

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My Story with Dr. Abdulrahman AlSumait

Eng. Majed AlZaabi

تجربة كانت بمثابة الحلم وهدف حياة وكيف اصبحت حقيقة ،وكيفية تطويع الهواية الى حرفة وعمل خيري تطوعي والابداع الذي ينتج عندما تكون هوايتك هي دراستك الاكاديمية وما استفدته من تجارب السفر مع العون المباشر وسفرتي مع الدكتور عبد الرحمن السميط في آخر حياته رحمه الله رحمة واسعة.

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Research & Quality

Prof. Muhammad Sarfraz

In a University environment, it is one of the fundamental requirements to set the momentum of its academic community for scientific inno­vation and creativity. Such a momentum is possible to achieve through high quality research. This talk is to make an awareness among the KU Community towards proceeding for a successful quality research. It aims at making some remarks from initiating research to get finally publishing a Quality research. Additionally, it will highlight some principles and standards for quality research. Finally, some recommendations would be made to the audience. The talk is expected to be beneficial for KU faculty, Researchers, Graduate students and many more interested in quality research.

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A spatial lens for solving real-world problems: a GIS approach

Dr. Saad AlSharrah

Spatial data provides tremendous benefits to modern societies, sup- porting decision-making in public health, disaster response, land management, environmental matters, agriculture, and urban and regional planning. Geographic information systems (GIS) assimilate tools and methods for acquiring, storing, managing, transforming, analyzing, summarizing and visualizing spatially referenced data, to understand and contribute to the solution of important real world problems. In this talk, Dr Alsharrah will present different applications of GIS and provide an in-depth lens on the potentiality of GeoHealth for understanding and preventing chronic disease.

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FAIR Digital Practices: Guiding Principles for Data Science

Dr. Dari Alhuwail

The volume of digital data is doubling every year according to EMC. To ensure proper leverage of these mountains of big data, it becomes paramount to effectively manage data. In this talk, Dr Alhuwail will overview the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.) Data Principles which act as a set of guiding principles. While these principles are important for all stakeholders in today's digital ecosystem, they become even more important for researcher and the research community.

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ABET Accreditation Preparation

Prof. Paul Manuel

The Department of Information Science is on its way of seeking ABET accreditation for BS (Information Science) under General Criteria. The assessment process of the program is the heart of the accreditation and it includes Program Educational Objectives, Student Outcomes, and Continuous Improvement. In this seminar, we update the department about the progress of the ABET accreditation process. The preparation for accreditation is team-effort. We mainly discuss our responsibilities and contri- bution to the accreditation process.

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