> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://syedmuhammadhussain.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Research

> Positions, focus areas, and academic collaborations

## Positions

<Steps>
  <Step title="Empathic Computing Lab, University of Auckland">
    **Remote Research Intern** · Aug 2025 – Dec 2025 · Supervisor: Dr. Nastaran Saffaryazdi

    Building multimodal distributed LLM-based systems for adaptive conversational agents. Integrating real-time neural and physiological signals to enable emotionally intelligent and context-aware human–AI interaction. Exploring multimodal fusion strategies and distributed deployment frameworks.

    [Lab profile](https://empathiccomputing.org/team/syed-muhammad-hussain/)
  </Step>

  <Step title="Empathic Computing Lab, University of South Australia">
    **Remote Researcher** · Sep 2024 – Feb 2025 · Supervisor: Dr. Kaining (Kai) Zhang

    Investigated EEG, head movement, eye gaze, and physiological signals to model user intent and preference in HCI contexts. Designed data preprocessing and feature extraction pipelines for multimodal biosignal analysis. Developed deep learning models (LSTM, GRU, TCN) for time-series classification from raw EEG, head movement, and eye gaze signals.

    [Lab profile](https://empathiccomputing.org/team/syed-muhammad-hussain/)
  </Step>

  <Step title="Habib University, Karachi">
    **Undergraduate Researcher** · May 2023 – Aug 2024 · Supervisor: Dr. Muhammad Farhan

    Led research on camouflaged object detection for military surveillance, wildlife monitoring, and autonomous vision systems. Developed synthetic data generation pipelines using GANs. Designed and trained custom deep learning models achieving improved detection accuracy.

    [Lab Research page](https://syed-m-hussain.github.io/Camouflaged-research-web/)
  </Step>
</Steps>

***

## Areas

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Multimodal AI and LLMs" icon="brain">
    Adaptive conversational agents, multimodal fusion, distributed LLM architectures, real-time neural signal integration
  </Card>

  <Card title="Computer vision" icon="eye">
    Camouflaged object detection, instance segmentation, synthetic data generation, YOLOv8, Mask R-CNN
  </Card>

  <Card title="Cognitive computing" icon="wave-pulse">
    EEG signal analysis, physiological signal processing, user intent modeling, time-series classification
  </Card>

  <Card title="Autonomous robotics" icon="robot">
    SLAM, ROS 2 navigation, dynamic path planning (DWB, TEB, RRT\*), mobile robot systems
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

## Supervisors & collaborators

| Name                       | Affiliation                                                      |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Dr. Mark Billinghurst      | Head of Empathic Computing Lab                                   |
| Dr. Nastaran Saffaryazdi   | Empathic Computing Lab, University of Auckland, New Zealand      |
| Dr. Kaining (Kai) Zhang    | Empathic Computing Lab, University of South Australia, Australia |
| Dr. Muhammad Farhan        | Habib University, Pakistan                                       |
| Dr. Qasim Pasta            | Habib University, Pakistan                                       |
| Dr. Basit Memon            | Habib University, Pakistan                                       |
| Dr. M. Mobeen Movania      | Habib University, Pakistan                                       |
| Dr. Muhammad Shahid Shaikh | Habib University, Pakistan                                       |