I am a Ph.D. student at the GrUVi lab, supervised by Prof. Andrea Tagliasacchi. My research lies at the intersection of computer vision and computer graphics, with a focus on 3D reconstruction and novel view synthesis. I am particularly interested in Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), aiming to generate photorealistic scene representations from sparse inputs.
Outside the lab, I enjoy Vancouver’s rare sunny days by exploring hiking trails. On rainy days, I unwind with jigsaw puzzles, board games, and crime movies.
Education
Simon Fraser University (SFU)
Ph.D. in Computer Science
Simon Fraser University (SFU)
Ph.D. in Engineering Science
University of Tehran
M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering
Thesis: Contol of Computer Mouse via Hand Gesture Recognition
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.