Denis Mbey Akola

Denis Mbey Akola

Graduate student

New York University

About me

I am a Ph.D student working with Prof. David Fouhey at New York University. Prior to that, I graduated with a Master’s degree (obtained in 2023) in Computer Science from Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IP Paris) and a Bachelor’s degree (obtained in 2020) in Computer Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

My research is centered around how we can build generalizable and robust algorithms for understanding and interacting with the visual world with minimal human supervision, making it possible to solve complex tasks in robotics, autonomous driving, and augmented and virtual reality. In pursuit of this objective, my research draws upon computer vision, representation learning, self-supervised learning, multi-modal learning, domain adaptation and natural language processing, seamlessly integrating these domains to develop computational models that deepen our understanding of the visual world and propel us closer to realizing this goal. Also, I aim to utilize the unexplored synergies between robot perception and foundation vision, language, and vision-language models, leveraging their inherent open-set capabilities to enhance the development of generalizable vision systems.

Interests
  • 2D & 3D Computer Vision
  • Robotics (Perception, SLAM, navigation)
Education
  • Ph.D Electrical Engineering, present

    New York University

  • Msc. Computer Science, 2023

    Institut Polytechnique de Paris

  • BSc. Computer Engineering, 2020

    Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Recent News

  • May 2024: I am thrilled to announce that our first workshop, “SPARK DEEP LEARNING WORKSHOP: From the Basics to Applications in the Context of Ghana,” has been accepted! This event will be co-organized with the IndabaX Ghana conference at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) on July 17-18, 2024. Stay tuned for more details!

  • April 2024: I will be joining the lab of Prof. David Fouhey as a PhD student in Fall 2024 at New York University! Excited about the journey ahead! Thanks to my mentors for their support throughout this process! A big shoutout to the Emerging Leaders in AI (ELAI) Grad Prep program from Black in AI!

  • Oct. 2023: I have received a MSc degree with highest honors and jury congratulations from Institut Polytechnique de Paris.

  • Sept. 2023: An extended abstract of our work on “How to train an ensemble of Faster R-CNN model to quantify uncertainity” at the 8th Junior Conference on Data Science and Engineering(JDSE) in Orsay, France 28 -29 September 2023.

  • Sept. 2023: I defended my Msc thesis at IP Paris. Thanks to Gilles Puy and David Hurych my advisors at valeo.ai.

  • Aug. 2023: I will be attending ICCV2023 in Paris, France as a student volunteer. I will be glad to connect with you.

  • Jan. 2023: I have accepted a research internship position for Spring and Summer 2023 at valeo.ai, a leading automonous vehicles R&D center in Paris. I will be working on domain adaptation for 3D semantic segmentation as the subject of my masters thesis.

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Valeo AI
Computer Vision Research Intern
Mar 2023 – Aug 2023 Paris, France
 
 
 
 
 
ENSTA PARIS, UI2S Research Laboratory
Research Assistant
Sep 2021 – Feb 2023 Palaiseau,France
 
 
 
 
 
Tribun Health
Computer Vision Research Intern
May 2022 – Aug 2022 Paris,France
 
 
 
 
 
Bewsys
Software Engineer
Sep 2021 – Apr 2022 Accra,Ghana
 
 
 
 
 
Department of Computer Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
Research and Teaching Assistant
Sep 2020 – Aug 2021 Kumasi,Ghana
 
 
 
 
 
FillyCoder
Software Engineer
Jul 2020 – Jul 2021 Accra,Ghana

Publications

  • A. Denis Mbey and F. Gianni, “How to effectively train an ensemble of Faster R-CNN object detectors to quantify uncertainty”, Pattern Analysis and Applications, 2022. - revised August 2023 arvix available here

Honors & Awards

  • Bourse Excellence scholarship receipent at IP Paris (2021-2023)
  • Campus France Ghana scholarship receipent at IP Paris (2021-2023)
  • Excellent student award recipient, College of Engineering, KNUST (2017,2018,2019)
  • Mastercard Foundation Scholarship award at KNUST (2016-2020) [Link]
  • Excellent graduating student, St. Charles Minor Seminary SHS (2015)

Projects

Community Engagement

Mentorship: I am always excited to mentor and support others to realize their full potential. I have mentored brilliant but needy students and guided them to apply for scholarships to pursue a university education. I have mentored five (5) students in my community, who are currently pursuing undergraduate programs at various universities in Ghana and abroad. I also mentor students across Africa through the Deep Learning Indaba mentorship program.

Conference Reviews: I am thrilled to have served as a reviewer for the African Computer Vision Summer School (ACVSS) 2024.

Community projects and Leadership: I founded a non-governmental organization called TechOne Foundation in Zebilla, my hometown in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Through this initiative, I teamed up with my friends in the community to provide ICT lessons to students. We have plans to extend the scope of the foundation to provide training programs in data science and software engineering to help the youth and school dropouts in Zebilla to acquire skills in these demanding areas to make themselves employable. Also, in France, I serve as the media secretary of the National Union of Ghanaians Students France Chapter.

Tutoring: During my time as a teaching assistant at the Department of Computer Engineering, I organized tutorial lessons in Computer Vision, Robotics, Linear Electronics, and Computer Graphics. In these sessions, I helped the students to have a further grasp of course concepts that were taught by the professors.

Volunteering: I have taken part in several community give-back initiatives during my time as a Mastercard Foundation Scholar. From teaching high school students to blood donation campaigns. I cherished every opportunity I had to give back to my community. In 2018, I spent two (2) months volunteering at Turing Trust Foundation in Kumasi, Ghana as a technical assitant. I installed useful educational software such as Microsoft Office Suite, Mavis Beacon Typing tutor and fixed glitches on recycled computers that were distributed to various basic and Junior High Schools in Ghanna to aid in the teaching and learning of ICT.

Please feel free to reach out, if you find this interesting and would like to collaborate for us to make an impact. I am always opened to learning from other people’s ideas. Together we can make the world better and put smiles on the faces of people.

Miscellaneous

Nature Photography: I enjoy spending time immersed in natural landscapes. I will be sharing photos of beautiful scenes I have captured during my travels and visits to nature parks worldwide. I have a passion for wildlife and will also post pictures from my wildlife adventures here.

Beautiful Sunset Photos - Plateau de Saclay, South of Paris,France, Jardin de Luxembourg, Paris, France, Prague Zoo, Czech Republic, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France , Lake Site - Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France