I am a Ph.D. student at the GrUVi lab, supervised by Andrea Tagliasacchi. My research focuses on 3D Reconstruction and Novel View Synthesis, with a particular emphesis on Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS).

Beyond the lab, I enjoy Vancouver’s rare sunny days by exploring hiking trails. On rainy days, I solve jigsaw puzzles, play board games, and enjoy crime movies.

Education

2024—Present

Simon Fraser University (SFU)

Ph.D. in Computer Science

2021—2023

Simon Fraser University (SFU)

Ph.D. in Engineering Science

2017—2020

University of Tehran

M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering

Thesis: Contol of Computer Mouse via Hand Gesture Recognition

2012—2017

Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic)

B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (Control)

Thesis: Analyzing Driver's Consciousness Levels Using EEG Signals

Publications

TPAMI 2025

Rate-Distortion Theory in Coding for Machines and its Application

Alon Harell, Yalda Foroutan, Nilesh Ahuja, Parual Datta, Bhavya Kanzariya, V. Srinivasa Somayazulu, Omesh Tickoo, Anderson de Andrade, Ivan V. Bajić

Extending rate-distortion theory for machine-vision codecs.

arXiv 2024

Evaluating Alternatives to SfM Point Cloud Initialization for Gaussian Splatting

Yalda Foroutan, Daniel Rebain, Kwang Moo Yi, Andrea Tagliasacchi

Utilizing a NeRF to guide the optimization of 3D Gaussian Splatting as an alternative to SfM initialization.

ICIP 2023

Base Layer Efficiency in Scalable Human-machine Coding

Yalda Foroutan, Alon Harell, Anderson de Andrade, Ivan V. Bajić

Enhancing base-layer training to achieve significant rate savings across multiple computer vision tasks.

ICMEW 2023

VVC+M: Plug and Play Scalable Image Coding for Humans and Machines

Alon Harell, Yalda Foroutan, Ivan V. Bajić

Improving residual coding in scalable human-machine systems through interprediction coding from a video codec.

ICMEW 2023

Conditional and Residual Methods in Scalable Coding for Humans and Machines

Anderson de Andrade, Alon Harell, Yalda Foroutan, Ivan V. Bajić

Presenting conditional and residual methods for scalable coding for both humans and machine.

arXiv 2020

Control of Computer Pointer Using Hand Gesture Recognition in Motion Picture

Yalda Foroutan, Ahmad Kalhor, Saeid Mohammadi Nejati, Samad Sheikhaei

Controlling computer pointer using hand detection and gesture classification.