Dr. Abdul Rahman Hafiz Abdul Ghani

About

I’m an AI entrepreneur and research-driven engineer with 15+ years across Japan and the UAE—combining academic rigor with hands-on delivery for enterprise and government.

What I do

Build edge-deployed vision systems (tracking, identity, video analytics)
Lead R&D → productization (metrics, evaluation, rollout, operations)
Originate and execute partnerships (education rollout, consulting, and joint projects)
Bridge Japan–GCC collaboration (trust, partnerships, execution)

My work spans research (University of Tokyo / Matsuo Lab), product R&D (ExaWizards), and government delivery (UAE), now applied inside Japan through AWL.

Focus areas

Multi-camera Multi-person Tracking (MCT) Face Identification & Best-shot Pipelines Edge AI (Jetson) Active Vision / Neural Attention Government & Critical Deployments AI Partnerships & Market Expansion

Impact

Selected outcomes across research, entrepreneurship, government delivery, and global business development.

UAE government delivery

Delivered a government-facing Face ID / video analytics engagement in Dubai with a lean team—from framing to implementation under real constraints.

~USD 0.4M scope (consulting + deployment) • Reference: uxe.ai

Future100 recognition

Wamda AI selected among the UAE’s Future100 for building future-focused AI capabilities aligned with national innovation priorities.

UAE Vision 2030 alignment • Future100 (2024) list • wamda.ai

AWL (Japan) — delivery & growth

Leading business development and productization; recently promoted to Senior Business Development Manager and General Manager, and serving as Chief Researcher (主任研究者; Project Lead, NEDO DTSU) on NEDO-aligned initiatives.

Enterprise-facing PoCs and multi-stakeholder coordination
Japan ⇄ UAE collaboration opportunities (MoU-level) and delegation support
Supported MBZUAI / Khalifa University internship pipeline to Japan
Market expansion support with JETRO UAE and regional ecosystem partners

Cross-functional execution + stakeholder coordination • awl.co.jp

Experience

Key roles across R&D, product, entrepreneurship, and international execution.

2025 — Present
AWL, Inc. (Japan) — Senior Business Development Manager / General Manager

Lead strategic business development and execution; drive edge AI productization and multi-camera tracking systems. Promoted in January 2026 to Senior Business Development Manager and General Manager, and serve as responsible manager and Chief Researcher (主任研究者; Project Lead, NEDO DTSU) on NEDO-aligned initiatives.
- Define evaluation metrics, technical requirements, and product roadmaps
- Coordinate cross-functional teams across Japan and Vietnam
- Drive customer-facing PoCs and deployment planning for real operations
- Advance international collaboration opportunities (Japan ⇄ GCC)
- Support university pipelines (MBZUAI / Khalifa University) and ecosystem connections (JETRO UAE)
2019 — 2025
Wamda AI (UAE) — Founder & CEO

Built a computer vision startup focused on attention-inspired “sharp vision” and large-scale identity systems; secured funding, filed international patents, and delivered real deployments.
- Government delivery in Dubai (Face ID / analytics) and multi-stakeholder execution
- Patent portfolio across active vision, tracking optimization, and best-shot extraction
- Public demos and talks across UAE/Japan events (GITEX, Intersec, SusHi Tech, etc.)
wamda.ai • Built GCC ecosystem relationships that can be converted into collaborations with Japan-based labs and institutes (incl. grant- or sponsor-funded projects where appropriate).
2018 — 2023

ExaWizards (Japan) — Lead AI Engineer

Led applied AI R&D and edge deployments; translated client needs into working PoCs and product-grade systems across education, healthcare, and security.
2016 — 2017

University of Tokyo (Japan) — Project Researcher (Matsuo Lab)

Developed deep learning applications in joint industry projects; contributed to publications and mentored students.
2011 — 2014

University of Fukui (Japan) — PhD (Engineering)

Research in bio-inspired active vision, 3D recognition, and deep learning; collaborations including neural activity analysis (calcium imaging).

Selected Work (Public References)

Examples that show research-to-product execution and applied vision systems.

Edge prototype → product

ExaWizards project that started as a home-built prototype and became a real product/business.

NVIDIA story • Product

Multi-camera tracking + Face ID

Applied multi-person, multi-camera tracking with identity pipelines.

Video demo

Medical AI collaboration

Deep learning collaboration with Osaka University (public reference).

Article

Publications, Patents & Talks

Full reference lists are available here on-page (no downloads needed).

Publications (peer-reviewed)

Nishanth Koganti, Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani, Yusuke Iwasawa, Kotaro Nakayama, Yutaka Matsuo (2018): Virtual Reality as a User-friendly Interface for Learning from Demonstrations. Demonstrations Track, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018). Montreal, Canada, April 21–26, 2018.
Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani, Nishanth Koganti, Alfredo Solano, Yusuke Iwasawa, Kotaro Nakayama, Yutaka Matsuo (2018): Designing Efficient Neural Attention Systems Towards Achieving Human-level Sharp Vision, ICLR 2018, OpenReview: https://openreview.net/forum?id=rJxqQY0LM (U.S. Provisional Pat. Ser. No. 62674794, filed 22-MAY-2018).
Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani, K. Nishanth, Ai Nakajima, N. Kimura, P. Radkohl, S. Iwai, Y. Kawazoe, Y. Iwasawa, K. Nakayama, Y. Matsuo (2018): An Analysis of Human Gaze Data for Autonomous Medical Image Diagnostics, The 28th Annual Conference of the Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS 2018), Workshop.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz and Hasan Al-Marzouqi (2016): Efficient Neural Network Training Using Curvelet Features, the 12th IEEE IVMSP Workshop 2016, Bordeaux, France.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Al-Nuaimi Ahmed Yarub, Md Faijul Amin, Kazuyuki Murase (2014): Classification of Skeletal Wireframe Representation of Hand Gesture using Complex-Valued Neural Network, Neural Processing Letters, pp. 1–16.
Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani and Kazuyuki Murase (2014): A Cortex-inspired Episodic Memory Toward Interactive 3D Robotic Vision, Proceedings of Computational Intelligence for Human-like Intelligence (CIHLI), IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI 2014), Orlando, Florida, USA, December 9–12, 2014 (Nominated for best paper award).
Abdul Rahman Hafiz and Kazuyuki Murase (2013): Semantic Spatiotemporal Memory Toward 3D Robotic Vision, RVSP 2013 Conference, Kitakyushu, Japan, December 10–12, 2013, pp. 238–241.
Fady Alnajjar, Indra M. Zin, Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Kazuyuki Murase (2013): A Tree-Type Memory Formation by Sensorimotor Feedback: A Possible Approach to the Development of Robotic Cognition, Intelligent Control and Automation (ICA), Vol. 4, pp. 154–165.
Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani, Md Faijul Amin, Kazuyuki Murase (2012): Using Complex-Valued Levenberg-Marquardt for Learning and Recognizing Various Hand Gestures, IEEE IJCNN 2012 (IEEE WCCI 2012), Brisbane, Australia, June 10–15, 2012, pp. 3224–3228.
Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani, Md Faijul Amin, Kazuyuki Murase (2011): Real-Time Hand Gesture Recognition Using Complex-Valued Neural Network (CVNN), ICONIP 2011, Shanghai, China, November 14–17, 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer), Vol. 7062, pp. 541–549.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Fady Alnajjar, Kazuyuki Murase (2011): A novel bio-inspired vision system: A step toward real-time human-robot interactions, Journal of Robotics, vol. 2011, Article ID 943137.
Abdul Rahman Abdul Ghani, Kazuyuki Murase (2011): iRov: A Robot Platform for Active Vision Research and Education, AMiRE 2011 (Springer), Bielefeld, Germany, May 23–25, 2011, pp. 173–182.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Md Faijul Amin, Hiroyuki Hase, Kazuyuki Murase (2010): Real-Time Hand Gesture Recognition Using Hand-Tree Representation, iFAN 2010, Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 25–26, 2010.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Fady Alnajjar, Kazuyuki Murase (2010): A Bio-Inspired Dynamic Edge Detection Toward Natural Human-Robot Interaction, iFAN 2010, Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 25–26, 2010.
Fady Alnajjar, Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Kazuyuki Murase (2010): HCBPM: An Idea toward a Social Learning Environment for Humanoid, WAC 2010 (ISORA2010), Kobe, Japan, Sept 19–23, 2010.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Fady Alnajjar, Kazuyuki Murase (2010): A Novel Dynamic Edge Detection Inspired from Mammalian Retina toward Better Robot Vision, WAC 2010 (ISORA2010), Kobe, Japan, Sept 19–23, 2010.
Fady Alnajjar, Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Kazuyuki Murase (2010): HCBPM: An Idea toward a Social Learning Environment for Humanoid Robot, Journal of Robotics, vol. 2010, Article ID 241785.
Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Fady Alnajjar, Kazuyuki Murase (2009): A New Dynamic Edge Detection Toward Better Human-Robot Interaction, FIRA'09, Inchon, Korea, August 16–18, 2009 (Springer).
Fady Alnajjar, Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Indra Bin Mohd. Zin, Kazuyuki Murase (2009): Vision-Motor Abstraction toward Robot Cognition, ICONIP 2009, Bangkok, Thailand, December 1–5, 2009 (Springer).
Fady Alnajjar, Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Kazuyuki Murase (2009): A Novel Hierarchical Constructive BackPropagation with Memory for Teaching a Robot the Names of Things, ICONIP 2009, Bangkok, Thailand, December 1–5, 2009 (Springer). Winner of travel grant (top 15% of submissions).
Fady Alnajjar, Abdul Rahman Hafiz, Indra Bin Mohammad Zin, K. Murase (2008): Vision-sensorimotor Abstraction and Imagination Towards Exploring Robot’s Inner World, IJCNN 2008, pp. 2419–2425.

If you’d like the same content in a single file, I can provide it separately.

Patents

Active Vision System for Achieving Sharp Vision (UAE) — P6002246/2022. Attention-controlled camera system inspired by human foveal vision.
Intelligent Vision System and Methods (International) — AE WO2020075147 (Issued Oct 20, 2019). Foveated, attention-driven system using multi-resolution streams + deep learning.
Video Location Tags — P2021-168040A (Issued Oct 21, 2021). Maps subjects to 3D spatial models for precise position estimation.
Human Tracking Optimization (1) — P21003JP00. Coordinate-transform pipeline for robust person tracking under lens distortion.
Human Tracking Optimization (2) — 1022JP001022JP00. Improves tracking for crouching/partially visible subjects via 3D planar frames and partial-image extraction.
Best-shot Extraction Pipeline — P20036JP01. Multi-stage selection of optimal face images from streams (quality filtering, balancing, ranking).

Presentations & exhibitions (last 5 years)

Mar 2025 — SusHi Tech Tokyo 2025 (Tokyo): Startup & innovation showcase with UAE delegation
Oct 2024 — GITEX Global 2024 (Dubai): Large-scale Face ID and edge AI systems for government applications
Jan 2024 — Intersec 2024 (Dubai): AI-based video analytics and face recognition for security and public safety
Oct 2023 — GITEX Global 2023 (Dubai): Large-scale face identification on edge devices for government applications
May 2023 — Expand North Star Roadshow – Japan Edition (AWS Startup Loft Tokyo): UAE–Japan startup ecosystem & market expansion
Feb 2023 — IDEX 2023 (Abu Dhabi): Wide-area surveillance and active vision AI system
Oct 2022 — GITEX Global 2022 (Dubai): Bio-inspired active vision camera system (Sharp Vision)

Education, awards, skills

Education

PhD (Engineering), University of Fukui (2014) — bio-inspired active vision (MEXT scholarship)
MEng, University of Fukui (2011) — robot vision (MEXT scholarship)
BSc, Computer Engineering (UAE, 2006)

Awards & scholarships

Japanese Government (MEXT) — exchange, master’s, and PhD scholarships
UAE — full tuition scholarship (high GPA)

Toolbox

Python C/C++ TensorFlow OpenCV MATLAB Unity iOS/Android Arduino

Activities

Secretary, University of Fukui International Student Association (UFISA) (2010–2014)

This page is designed to be complete on its own; additional documents available on request.

Media

Selected moments and media appearances that support global outreach in the GCC—press, recognition, and public-facing communication. (Assets are optimized for fast loading.)