Biography

Dr. Hamarneh is a Professor at the school of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, where he also served as the Associate Director for Graduate Studies (2016-2020). He was a visiting professor at INRIA and Ecole Central Paris (GALEN team) (2010-2011). Before joining SFU in 2003, Dr. Hamarneh was a postdoctoral fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children (Mouse Imaging Centre) and the University of Toronto (Dept. Medical Biophysics) (2001-2003). He completed his doctoral studies (2001) at Chalmers University of Technology (Dept. Signals and Systems) and, as a pre-doctoral research fellow (2000-2001), at the University of Toronto (Dept. Computer Science). He received his Master's degree with distinction in digital communications from Chalmers University (1997) and Bachelor's degree from Jordan University (Dept. Electrical Engineering) (1995). Prior to graduate studies, he worked as an R&D engineer at SEDCO (Systems and Electronics Development Co.) (1995), Queen Alia International Airport (Royal Jordanian Airlines), and Rostock University (Institut för Technische Informatik) (1994).

Dr. Hamarneh has been a Senior  Member of IEEE and a Senior Member of ACM since 2010.  He is a Founding Member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Chapter in Vancouver. He is also a Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) society member and an associate member of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health (formerly: Brain Research Centre), Kids Brain Health Network (formerly: NeuroDevNet), SFU/UBC Graduate Program in Bioinformatics, UBC’s Biomedical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Research Cluster, BCNI Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, SFU Neuroscience, SFU Centre for Disability Independence Research and Education, and others. 

Dr. Hamarneh's primary research interest is in medical image analysis. He has over 300 peer-reviewed publications in top international conferences (e.g., MICCAI, ISBI, CVPR, ICCV, IPMI) and journals (e.g. , MedIA, NeuroImage, IEEE TMI, TPAMI, TBME, Bioinformatics) [Google scholar]. He is the author of several invited book chapters (by Springer, Wiley, and CRC) and the co-editor of several proceedings. His group contributes MIA software and datasets with over 60k downloads,  including open source Insight Journal publications: MATITK , nD-SIFT, ITK-DefOrgs, ITK on iOS, FastRW, LiveVessel, VascuSynth, PerceptVis, TongueTrack, DeformIt, and many others.  Dr. Hamarneh is a co-inventor on several patents.

Dr. Hamarneh has been invited to talk and give lectures at several universities and companies worldwide including MIT, NYU, INRIA, Philips, Siemens, and others. He was keynote speaker at CVPR-ISIC 2019, SNMNI 2019,  and SCIA 2011. 

Dr. Hamarneh's research attracted multi-million dollar funding from several generous sources including NSERC, CIHR, CFI, MSFHR, MITACS, QNRF and other national and international hospitals and companies.

Dr. Hamarneh's work has received numerous distinctions including several best paper awards, top accessed papers, invitations for  special journal issues, best reviewer awards, and others. His work was featured on the front page of the Vancouver Sun, in IEEE Intelligent Systems In the News, ACM Tech News, on journal cover and others.

Dr. Hamarneh co-chaired and co-organized the first MICCAI workshop on functional medical image analysis (2008). He also led the organization of  two Banff workshops on  Mathematical Methods for MIA (2007) and on  Geometry for Anatomy (2011), attracting the top researchers worldwide in these areas.

Dr. Hamarneh served as an Associate Editor for IEEE TMI and program committee and review committee member for several conferences including MICCAI, IPMI, ISBI, SPIE MI, CVPR, ICCV, and MMBIA. He regularly reviews for international journals including  MedIA, IEEE TMI, PAMI, BME, TIP, TSP, NeuroImage, and CVIU.  He also served on the  editorial board the journal of Image and Vision Computing. He also acts as a reviewer for Canadian and international funding agencies, e.g. NSERC, CIHR, MITACS, BIRS, and others.

Dr. Hamarneh develops and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in medical image analysis and biomedical computing and trains  postdoctoral fellows, PhD and MSc students who have received prestigious awards (e.g.  3 CIPPRS dissertation awards and one honourable mention, NSERC scholarships, SFU scholarships,  Borealis AI Global Fellowship, and Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal) and secured outstanding positions  (e.g. faculty members and research scientists) at various academic institutions and research labs (e.g. Harvard, NASA JPL, University of Antwerp, University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, University of British Columbia) and companies (e.g. Google, Amazon, Apple, Roche, Autodesk).