Abdul Bais
Professor, Electronic Systems Engineering, University of ReginaProgram Chair, Electronic Systems Engineering
About me
I am a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Regina, where I have chaired the Electronic Systems Engineering program since 2023. My research applies computer vision and machine learning to sensing problems in the real world, above all in precision agriculture: finding weeds, diseases and insect pests, counting plants and grain, and phenotyping crops from ground, drone and satellite imagery.
My current interests are:
- Generative models
- Remote sensing
- Multimodal learning
- Vision-language models
- Domain adaptation
- Plant phenotyping
So far this work has produced 56 journal articles, 65 conference papers and a granted US patent, and I have supervised 9 PhD students and 6 postdoctoral fellows.
Academia
I came to the University of Regina in 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow and sessional lecturer. I then served as Instructor III (2013–2015), Assistant Professor (2015–2020) and Associate Professor (2020–2024), and was promoted to Professor in 2024. Before that, I supervised Master’s research at UET Peshawar and sat on the boards of studies of three engineering departments in Pakistan.
Partnerships
Much of my group’s work is done with industry and producer organizations, including Croptimistic Technology, MacDon Industries, the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, with support from NSERC, Mitacs and Alberta Innovates. I also collaborate with researchers at KFUPM in Saudi Arabia, Edith Cowan University in Australia and NUML in Pakistan.
Education
- TU WienDoctor of Technical Sciences, 2007Vienna University of Technology, AustriaThesis: Real-time mobile robot self-localization: a stereo vision based approach
- UET PeshawarMSc in Electrical Engineering, 2003Computer Information Systems Engineering, NWFP University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar
- UET PeshawarBSc in Electrical Engineering, 2000Electronic Communication, NWFP University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar
Interested in graduate research on computer vision for agriculture? Email me with your CV and a short note on what you would like to work on.
Recent news
- ServiceServing as alternate chair of the Computer Sciences and Mathematics committee for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s 2027 Resource Allocation Competition.
- GraduationNumair Nadeem completed a PhD on domain-robust, label-efficient semantic segmentation, and Shayan Jalilian completed an MASc on vision-language guidance for the Segment Anything Model.
- PaperLanguage anchors for semi-supervised image segmentation, presented at ECCV 2026 in Malmö. See paper
- GraduationNisar Ali completed a PhD on UAV and AI-based phenotyping for wheat breeding under field conditions.
- ServiceProgram committee for AAAI-27, and reviewer for NeurIPS 2026, ECCV 2026, ACM Multimedia 2026 and CVPR 2026.
- PaperTwo papers on machine-learning-driven space mapping for microwave filter design at IEEE NEMO 2026 in Valencia. See papers
- PaperFICount, for few-shot insect counting, and HybridRDG, for zero-shot autism biomarker detection from EEG, at the CVPR 2026 workshops. See papers
- PaperSPEGNet, for camouflaged object detection, published in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. See paper
- PaperCCUDA-SS, for cross-crop domain adaptation, and a geometry-guided method for counting lentil plants, published in IEEE Transactions on AgriFood Electronics. See papers
- PatentUS patent US12567262B2 granted for capturing and extracting data from images of field crops and weeds using machine learning. See patent
- AwardReceived the Engineering Research Excellence Award from the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Regina. Details
- FundingNew Agriculture Development Fund project as principal investigator: an AI platform for selecting abiotic stress resilient traits in wheat. Details
- FundingJoined an ADF Strategic Research Initiative on long-term management of herbicide-resistant kochia and wild oat. Details
- GraduationMuhib Ullah completed a PhD on precision canola: consistency analysis, damage quantification and insect monitoring.
- PaperAgMIC, masked image consistency for cross-domain agricultural segmentation, at the ICCV 2025 workshops. See paper
- GraduationOlufemi Oluyemi completed a co-supervised PhD on machine-learning-driven parameter extraction for microwave filter design.
- PaperMaskAdapt, geometry-aware domain adaptation with RGB-depth masking, at the CVPR 2025 workshops. See paper
- EditorialGuest editor of a Remote Sensing special issue on deep learning and machine learning for remote sensing image analysis. Details
- TalkInvited talks at the Western Forum on Pest Management in Winnipeg and at Soils and Crops in Saskatoon. Details
- PaperDetection of Fusarium head blight spikes from UAV imagery published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. See paper
- CareerPromoted to Professor, Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Regina.
- GraduationYingchao (Kelci) Huang completed a PhD on handling distribution change in soil classification with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy.
- CareerAppointed Program Chair of Electronic Systems Engineering.
- GraduationMuhammad Hamza Asad completed a PhD on applying AI to variable rate technology in agriculture.
- ServiceTutorial Chair for the IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering in Regina, and presented a tutorial on cloud-based GPU deep learning.
- FundingNSERC Alliance–Mitacs project with Croptimistic Technology on machine learning for quantifying crop and weed populations from RGB images. Details
- MediaOur variable-rate herbicide work featured on CBC Radio’s The Afternoon Edition and by CBC Saskatchewan. Details
- CareerPromoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
Current projects
- Mar 2026PartnerA Long-Term Management Plan for Herbicide-Resistant Kochia and Wild Oat
Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, ADF Strategic Research Initiative; SaskOilSeeds, SaskWheat, RDAR, Alberta Grains, SaskBarley, Sask Pulse Growers, ADF Strategic Research Initiative, 2026–2031 - Mar 2026LeadDeveloping an AI Platform for Selecting Abiotic Stress Resilient Traits in Wheat
SK Wheat Development Commission and SK Ministry of Agriculture, Agriculture Development Fund, 2026–2030 - Apr 2021LeadCrop Stress Management using Multisource Data Fusion
NSERC, Discovery Launch Supplement and Discovery Grant, 2021–2027