ibrahim_alizada’s Site

At the end of my previous blog post, I gave a spoiler about the research topic we are currently working on with my classmate Aykhan. In this post, I will give detailed information about the project and explore it in terms of the evaluation criteria and questions taught during the classes.

What are we trying to do and What do we intend to achieve/demonstrate?

- Our project is about the detection of the Azerbaijani Sign Language. As we know, deaf and mute people face numerous difficulties communicating with society. In order to make their life easier, we are planning to generate software that will convert the sign language presented as a video into textual data.

So, we are trying to develop a kind of software or API that will convert continuous input video to text output.

Our aim is to allow Azerbaijani deaf-mute citizens to speak the “same language” with the whole nation.

What do we understand about the domain? 

- At the moment, we are not much aware of the domain yet, but we are eager to learn Azerbaijani Sign Language at least. Already started to study the sign language alphabet.

What data do we think we will need?

- We ourselves are searching for proper and understandable data in various platforms, including Kaggle and etc. Several datasets are available in other languages, but not Azerbaijani. Therefore, we have to generate our video samples as well. Moreover, our supervisor Professor Jamaladdin Hasanov is in contact with Azerbaijani Governmental officials to find the appropriate data usable for our project.

These days, we are investigating the "RWTH-PHOENIX-Weather 2014" dataset which is publicly available.

What tools and methods do we propose to use?

- We are going to use OpenCV for the Computer Vision side, NLTK for the NLP side using Python. According to the initial research we did, CNN+LSTM is the best option for now. But we will try to find, use and test alternative approaches for Azerbaijani Sign Language Project.

Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?

- All governmental and non-governmental services, also deaf-mute people care for this project. It will remove the communication barrier between the service sector and deaf-mute citizens.

In the end, I would like to conclude that although the idea has been realized for many Languages, there is still no Sign Language Detection for the Azerbaijani one. It will probably require much effort and time to work on it, but I personally believe the revolutionary effect of the results of this project (hopefully, if it is successful) on the Azerbaijani community. Additionally, we will study much through implementing and broaden our knowledge on Computer Vision, ML, and DL. So, this project is interesting to me because of both the self-study side and the social impact on the special part of the community.

That is all for now. I will continue writing blogs about the news of our project.

Although I have been and am involved in several field-related projects, never had experience in the research side. Therefore I was looking forward to hearing from Professors about master thesis selection, preparation, and presentation process.

The first lecture was an introductory class presenting the preliminary information for the research. We started with the main objective of the master thesis project which was to introduce new thinking, a new way of solution to a concrete problem, and realizing the selected method for the tangible issue using technical skills gained.

After informed about George Heilmer’s Catechism that unites 9 main questions for research projects to answer, we got acquainted with 7 stages of the technical approach. Defining the problem in a correct way, collecting the needed data appropriately, selecting the most suitable method and tools for the project, building systematic development parsing to tasks and milestones, keeping track of the testing results while developing the system, demonstrate the functionality of the system after each milestone, and most importantly, writing formal technical report - DOCUMENTATION were those phases.

At the end of the lecture, various sources of technical papers and additional reading materials were announced to us by the Professors.

The second lecture was covering Research Methodology. It was noted that the Research project is more likely a new approach to an unresolved problem. We then saw some research questions in many contexts including CV, NLP.

Research types were another topic discussed in the last lecture. We got the difference between creative (development of new theories) and experimental research (whether or not dependent variable - “effect”  changes on the base of independent variable - “cause”).

Then Dr.Kaisler talked about one of his projects about NLP as an example of the project development process pointing through all Heilmeier questions. Briefly, we have observed all the crucial points to be touched and questions that should be asked beforehand to implement and organize successful research projects.

The lecture ended with our prior ideas for the thesis and Dr.Pless’s feedbacks on those projects. I noted my interest in Computer Vision and Azerbaijani Sign Language project there and got the commentaries of the Professors.

I am currently working on this project with my classmate Aykhan supervised by Dr.Jamaladdin. After 2 classes, we now can see more broad sights in front of us, also are aware of the steps we should follow to reach the conclusion. And I hope we will continue to learn much more through the semester and finalize our project successfully.

That is all from my side for now. We are impatiently waiting for the next lectures to see the real examples of research problems in different domains.

My full name is Ibrahim Alizada - I am a student of the dual diploma master's degree program - “Master of Science in Computer Science and Data Analytics” held by ADA and George Washington University.

I was born in Baku, Azerbaijan on 3 January 2000. I have lived mainly in the capital city except for summers. Almost all my summers have been spent in the South region of Azerbaijan - the district called “Masallı” (“Masally district” in English) - a wonderful green place bordered by the Caspian Sea on the east and Talysh Mountains on the West.

I have studied bachelor’s degree in the major “Information Technology” at Qafqaz University (current name - Baku Engineering University) and graduate with honors (red diploma).

I have started working career in the 3rd course of the bachelor at IT Solutions company as a Junior Python Developer. We were working with mainly Django to offer web development services.

After meeting with Data Science, I have been strictly involved in that path. I had an internship in an Azerbaijani Data Science training center named "QSS Analytics". After some time having self-study, I became a mentor at SQL and Python classes there.

Then I moved to Kapital Bank (the prominent bank in Azerbaijan) as a Data Analyst of the MicroCredits Department. My main responsibility was obtaining, cleaning, analyzing data, interpreting results, identifying patterns, and preparing data reports using visualizing tools.

I am keenly interested in Deep Learning and trying to do self-study at Computer Vision. We have recently created a team of technical guys and passionately working on startup ideas that belong to us related to AI and Gaming Industry.

Outside working and studying, I am fond of playing and watching football. I am a big fan of the Chelsea Football Club. Besides football, I like reading, especially detective and science-fiction books, and having conversations with people from various parts of the world using mobile apps to meet and learn more about other nation’s lifestyles and cultures.

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