Jan 2025 – present
IAPR TC10 Chair
Prof. KC Santosh—a highly accomplished AI expert and TEDx speaker—is the chair of the Department of Computer Science and the founding director of the AI Research Lab (since 2015) at the University of South Dakota (USD). He also served as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and as a postdoctoral research scientist at the LORIA Research Center, in collaboration with industrial partner ITESOFT, France. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science—Artificial Intelligence from INRIA Nancy Grand East Research Center (France). With funding exceeding $8 million from sources like DOD, NSF, ED, and SDBOR, he has authored 11 books and more than 250 peer-reviewed research articles, including IEEE TPAMI and TMI. He serves as an associate editor for esteemed journals such as IEEE Transactions on AI, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, International Journal of Machine Learning & Cybernetics, and International Journal of Pattern Recognition & Artificial Intelligence.
To name a few, Prof. Santosh is the proud recipient of the Visionary Leadership Award (University of Derby—UK, 2023), the Cutler Award for Teaching and Research Excellence (USD, 2021), the President’s Research Excellence Award (USD, 2019), and the Ignite Award from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS, 2014).
Effective from Spring 2024, he joined the NIST AI Safety Institute Consortium and, since December 2024, has been serving in the U.S. Speaker Program (U.S. Department of State), delivering talks on AI and AI education—being the only representative from South Dakota in both roles.
More info: Personal page, YouTube, TEDx talk.
IAPR TC10
Vice Chair
Dr. Momina Moetesum, a distinguished academic and AI researcher, is the Head of the Software Engineering Department at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Bahria University Islamabad in 2021, supported by the prestigious Hubert Curien PERIDOT Scholarship, which enabled her to conduct research at LIPADE, Université Paris Descartes, France. With extensive teaching and research experience, she specializes in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Document AI. She is currently heading the Ethical AI research group at NUST to ensure responsible adoption of AI in education.
Dr. Moetesum has delivered several high-profile guest talks, including a distinguished address at the ICCIA Leadership Talks on Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Environments, organized by the Islamic Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture. She has also contributed as a trainer in advanced AI programs, including USAID’s Higher Education System Strengthening Activity (HESSA) initiative, where she developed microcredentials such as “Applied Machine Learning and Data Analysis.”
An advocate for equity and inclusion, Dr. Moetesum serves on the IAPR’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Standing Committee. She has worked extensively to support women and marginalized communities by helping them upskill in the latest technologies. Through her hands-on training courses on AI and Computer Vision, she has empowered learners to adopt cutting-edge technologies.
During her tenure at Bahria University, Dr. Moetesum played a pivotal role in establishing the Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (CoE-AI), serving as the Head of the Machine Learning and Deep Learning wing. Under her leadership, the center advanced AI research and skill development, delivering impactful training and supervising innovative projects.
As an active member of the IAPR community, Dr. Moetesum has chaired various IAPR events, including ICDAR and DAS. She serves as the Manager of IAPR’s Pakistan chapter, the Pakistan Pattern Recognition Society, and as the Editor-in-Chief of its newsletter. She actively organizes international conferences, workshops, and summer schools, strengthening AI education and research at both national and international levels.
With over 30 publications in esteemed journals and conferences, Dr. Moetesum’s contributions to AI applications in neuropsychological assessments, handwriting analysis, and smart agriculture are widely recognized. She remains dedicated to fostering innovation and collaboration in AI education, training, and interdisciplinary research.
More info: LinkedIn Profile, Google Profile.
IAPR TC10
Communications Officer
Dr. Christophe Rigaud (Ph.D.) is a research engineer (postdoc) in document image analysis at the L3i laboratory of the University of La Rochelle (France). He received a double European PhD degree in computer science from the University of La Rochelle (France) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) in 2014. His PhD thesis, titled “Segmentation and Indexation of Complex Objects in Comic Book Images,” was supervised by Jean-Christophe Burie, Jean-Marc Ogier from L3i lab, and Dimosthenis Karatzas from the Center of Computer Vision (CVC) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
His current research focuses on the analysis of comic book images using computer vision techniques. He aims to develop methods for automatically describing comic page content, including the identification of panels, speech balloons, text, comic characters, their interactions, and semantic meanings.
Dr. Rigaud has authored 20 scientific publications, including five book chapters, three journal articles, and numerous conference and workshop papers. He actively contributes to various program committees for summer schools (SSDA’18), workshops (GREC’17, MANPU’17), and competitions such as the Engineering Drawing Challenge (GREC’15), Multi-lingual Scene Text Detection and Script Identification (RRC-MLT, ICDAR’17), Subgraph Spotting in Graph-based Representations of Comic Images (SSGCI, ICPR’18), and Fine-Grained Classification of Comic Characters (FGC) and Post-OCR Text Correction (POCR) at ICDAR’19.
For more information, please visit his webpage.
IAPR TC10
Webmaster
Muhammad Muzzamil LUQMAN (Ph.D.) is a research scientist specializing in Document Image Analysis, Pattern Recognition, and Computer Vision. He is currently employed as a permanent Research Engineer at the L3i Laboratory, University of La Rochelle (France). Luqman earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from François Rabelais University of Tours (France) and Autonoma University of Barcelona (Spain). His thesis, co-supervised by Professor Jean-Yves Ramel and Professor Josep Llados, was titled “Fuzzy Multilevel Graph Embedding for Recognition, Indexing and Retrieval of Graphic Document Images.” His research interests include Structural Pattern Recognition, Document Image Analysis, Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition, Graphics Recognition, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Augmented Reality, and Biomimicry.
For more information, please visit the webpage.