Branislav Popović, Ph.D.

Senior Research Associate / Regular Member of CEVAS
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences (Novi Sad, Serbia)

Date of appointment: Research Assistant (April 25, 2012), Research Associate (March 26, 2015), Senior Research Associate (February 24, 2020)
(May 2012 - Present)

Vice-Dean for Artistic and Scientific-Research Work / Associate Professor
Alfa BK University, Academy of Arts (Belgrade, Serbia)

Date of appointment: Assistant Professor (Acoustics and Sound Reinforcement, March 20, 2015), Associate Professor (Electrical Engineering, February 27, 2018), Vice-Dean for Artistic and Scientific-Research Work (April 15, 2019)
(February 2015 - Present)

Founder & Owner / Senior Software Developer and Consultant
Computer Programming Agency Code85 (Odžaci, Serbia)

(December 2017 - Present)

Associate Professor
Alfa BK University, Faculty of Information Technology & Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science (Belgrade, Serbia)
(contract)

(October 2019 - September 2020)

Research and Development Consultant
AlfaNum - Speech Technologies Ltd (Novi Sad, Serbia)

(May 2012 - December 2017)

Teaching Associate
Technical Vocational College (Novi Sad, Serbia)
(contract)

(February 2013 - Septembar 2013)

Chief Programmer / Research Consultant (text to speech synthesis for Hebrew)
Aharon Speech Technologies (Herzlya, Israel)

In cooperation with the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad and AlfaNum - Speech Technologies Ltd, as part of project TR32035.
(October 2011 - September 2012)

Ph.D. Student – Researcher of the Ministry of Education and Science (Technological Development)
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences (Novi Sad, Serbia)

(October 2009 – April 2012)

Internship at Vip mobile (Belgrade, Serbia)

Core Network and Services (July 2009) and Network Operations sector (August 2009)

Internship at MicronasNIT (Novi Sad, Serbia)

Computer engineering department (RT-RK)
(August 2008 - August 2009)

Doctoral academic studies
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Telecommunications and Signal Processing)

"Hierarchical Clustering of Gaussian Mixture Models in Applications for Continuous Speech Recognition", GPA 10.00;
Defended Ph.D. thesis first in class.

Subjects: Algorithms for Digital Signal Processing, Selected Chapters in Acoustics and Audio Engineering, Selected Chapters in Pattern Recognition, Scientific Research Method, Selected Chapters in Mathematics (Advanced Statistics, Fuzzy Logic), Current State in the Field, Digital Image Processing Algorithms, Man-machine Voice Communication.

(November 2009 - July 2012)

Integrated Undergraduate Academic and Graduate Academic - Master level studies
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Power, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (Telecommunications and Signal Processing)

"Two Approaches at Measurement of Harmonics at Low SNR", GPA 9,81;
The best engineer - Master of the promotion on the Department of Power, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, awards listed below.

(July 2004 - March 2009)

* Foundations of Project Management, Coursera, Authorized by Google, Credential ID SCR6LY64V63Y, May 2022
* IBM AI Engineering Specialization, Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID WDT2T7YANB6R, April 2022
* AI Capstone Project with Deep Learning, Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID YVW2KJTF526B, April 2022
* Building Deep Learning Models with TensorFlow, Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID WJ5LXXDA2K2T, April 2022
* Deep Neural Networks with PyTorch (with Honors), Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID Q5ZZTHMMGMAT, March 2022
* Introduction to Computer Vision and Image Processing, Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID PX3WZS6XCBYB, January 2022
* Introduction to Deep Learning & Neural Networks with Keras, Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID Q6ST7536U9WA, December 2021
* Machine Learning with Python, Coursera, Authorized by IBM, Credential ID 8GYGFMFKR8RM, December 2021
* DeepLearning.AI TensorFlow Developer Specialization, Coursera, Authorized by DeepLearning.AI, Credential ID 8UREWWEGMHJ6, December 2021
* Sequences, Time Series and Prediction, Coursera, Authorized by DeepLearning.AI, Credential ID NTL56LXFN2BY, December 2021
* Natural Language Processing in TensorFlow, Coursera, Authorized by DeepLearning.AI, Credential ID EQVLQ2HV4M5D, December 2021
* Convolutional Neural Networks in TensorFlow, Coursera, Authorized by DeepLearning.AI, Credential ID FKBMCPL2TJ7P, November 2021
* Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning, Coursera, Authorized by DeepLearning.AI, Credential ID 3KDTS5XU8J5D, November 2021

* "MEDICTA: Development of Systems for Dictation of Medical Findings in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian including Latin Expressions", Grant agreement no. 825003, Horizon 2020, DIH-HERO Technology Transfer Experiment Call 2020 (August 2021 - Present)
* "MARVEL: Multimodal Extreme Scale Data Analytics for Smart Cities Environments", Grant agreement ID 957337, H2020-EU.2.1.1. (January 2021 - Present)
* "S-ADAPT: Speaker/Style Adaptation for Digital Voice Assistants Based on Image Processing Methods", Grant No. 6524560, Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia (September 2020 - Present)
- Head of the ASR team
* "Innovative Scientific and Artistic Research from the Faculty of Technical Sciences Activity Domain", MESTD No. 451-03-68/2020-14/200156 (January 2020 - Present)
* "SENVIBE: Strengthening Educational Capacities by Building Competences and Cooperation in the Field of Noise and Vibration Engineering", no. 598241-EPP-1-2018-1-RS-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP (November 2018 - Present)
- Key staff member
* "Development of Dialogue Systems for Serbian and Other South Slavic Languages", id TR32035 (January 2011 - December 2019)
- Leader of several project activities (LVCSR, VAD)
* "DANSPLAT: A Platform for the Applications of Speech Technologies on Smartphones for the Languages of the Danube Region", id Е! 9944 (January 2016 - January 2019)
- Senior researcher
* "SP2: SCOPES Project on Speech Prosody", SNSF no. IZ73Z0_152495 (April 2014 - March 2016)
* "S-VERIFY: Advanced Speaker Verification", id Е! 8719 (January 2014 - September 2016)
* "Digital Audio Signals Processing", AlfaNum - Speech Technologies Ltd (December 2017 - Present)
* "Automatic Speech Recognition System for Dictating Medical Findings", Pension and Disability Insurance Fund of the Republic of Serbia, Contract no. 404.3-399/19 (August 2019 - December 2020)
- Authorized representative
* "Central Audio-Library of the University of Novi Sad (CABUNS)", PSNTR No. 114-451-2570/2016-02 (May 2016 - March 2020)
* "Audio Library for the Disabled (ABOSI)", PSNTR No. 114-451-2210/2011-04 (May 2015 - December 2015)
* "Human-Machine Speech Communication", id TR11001 (October 2009 - December 2010)

* Founder and manager of a privately owned computer programming agency (Code85)
* Vice-Dean for Artistic and Scientific-Research Work (Academy of Arts)
* Project S-ADAPT: Co-leader of the scientific part of the Project (head of the ASR team)
* Project TR32035: Leader of several project activities (LVCSR, VAD)
* Project FADiASR: Principal Investigator (PROMIS, passed to the final selection round)
* Chief programmer on the speech synthesizer development project for Hebrew
* Research and development consultant (AlfaNum, Aharon)

* Research visit, University of Ghent, Department of Telecommunications and Information Processing (TELIN), Ghent, Belgium, within the project AI - S-ADAPT supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, Grant No. 6524560, 21-28 June, 2022
* Study visit, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, ERASMUS+ project SENVIBE, Stockholm, Sweden, 15-22 May, 2022
* Study visit, University of Southampton, Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, ERASMUS+ project SENVIBE, Southampton, UK, 01-05 December, 2019
* Study visit, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, ERASMUS+ project SENVIBE, Stockholm, Sweden, 08-13 June, 2019
* ERASMUS+ Staff Mobility Programme, University of West Bohemia, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Pilsen, Czech Republic, May 22 - June 04, 2017
* Spring School on Optimization and Data Science, COST Action TD1207, Novi Sad, Serbia, 13-17 March 2017
* Agile Software Development with Scrum, AlfaNum - Speech Technologies, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2013
* CV Writing & Interview Workshops, Career Center of the Fund for Young Talents of the Republic of Serbia, 2012
* 3rd COST 2102 Int. Trng. Sch. on: Toward Autonomous, Adaptive, and Context-Aware Multimodal Interfaces: Theor. & Practical Iss., Caserta, Italy, 2010
* Cell Summer School, IBM and MicronasNIT, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2008

* Regular member of the Centre of Excellence CEVAS (October 2014 - Present)
* Member of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and IEEE Computer Society (December 2015 - Present)
* Member of the Programme Committee of the International Conference on Speech and Computer, SPECOM (2017 - present)
* Member of the Programme Committee of the International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing, IDC-2019, Special Session on Intelligent Human-Machine Interfaces (IHMI)
* Member of the Programme Committee of the International Acoustics and Audio Engineering Conference, TAKTONS (2019 - present)
* Member of the Scientific Committee of the conference Digital Image and Speech Processing, DOGS (2019 - present)
* Member of the Serbian AI Society (July 2020 - Present)

* Reviewer for Applied Sciences (MDPI)
* Reviewer for Applied Soft Computing Journal (Elsevier)
* Reviewer for Expert Systems with Applications (Elsevier)
* Reviewer for Fuzzy Sets and Systems (Elsevier)
* Reviewer for Data in Brief (Elsevier)
* Reviewer for International Journal of Medical Informatics (Elsevier)
* Reviewer for Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information (Elsevier)
* Reviewer for Stat - ScholarOne Manuscripts (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd)
* Reviewer for Electronics Letters (Institution of Engineering and Technology)
* Reviewer for Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience (Hindawi)
* Reviewer for International Journal of Sensors, Wireless Communications and Control (Bentham Science)
* Reviewer for Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers (World Scientific)
* Reviewer for SPIIRAS Proceedings (St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
* Reviewer for a number of scientific conferences (SPECOM, IDC IHMI, CogInfoCom, TELFOR, TAKTONS, DOGS, ICIST (KTU.LT), CECNet, FSDM, SNSP, IVPAI)

* Award for an associate or a researcher elected in research or scientific title with the largest number of papers on the SCI list in 2021, Department for Power, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2021
* "The Science that Connects" competition, one of nine multidisciplinary teams chosen to be presented as part of "The European Researchers' Night" manifestation, team leader role, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2018
* "On the Trails of Nikola Tesla", a contest for the best innovative idea for a new product or service - "Voice Assistant - An Application for Serbian and Other South Slavic Languages", Union of Engineers and Technicians of Serbia, second place, 2018
* Ministry of Science and Technological Development scholarship for Ph.D. students, 2010 - 2012
* University of Novi Sad exceptional student's award, 2010
* Scholarship of the Vip Mobile company for 2009/10
* Award for the best engineer - Master of the promotion on the Department of Power, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, 2009
* Fund for Young Talents of the Republic of Serbia scholarship, October 2008 - October 2009
* Award for the best young explorer's publication in the metrology section, ETRAN conference, 2009
* Scholarship of the MicronasNIT company for 2008/09
* Faculty of Technical Sciences exceptional student's award for school years 2004/05, 2006/07, 2007/08 and 2008/2009
* University of Sheffield competition, awarded thesis for a high-school students of the Republic of Serbia, "To Europe Through Knowledge", 2004

* Artificial Intelligence. Digital Signal Processing . Natural Language Processing
* Speech Recognition . Speech Synthesis . Speaker Identification
* Image Processing . Pattern Recognition . Emotion Recognition (speech and image)
* Image Recognition . Image Retrieval . Machine Learning . Data Mining
* Kaldi Speech Recognition Toolkit (speech recognition)
* TensorFlow (Keras) . PyTorch (machine learning)
* Visual Studio . Android Studio . TFS . Git . C++, C, Java - programming
* Python, Matlab, Android, Android NDK - programming . HTML, CSS - web design
* Adobe Creative Suite - web design, image processing, animations
* Autodesk 3ds Max - 3D modeling and animation
* CorelDRAW Graphic Suite - animations and design
* Sound Forge - audio processing . Minitab - statistics
* LaTeX - technical and scientific documentation
* Communication and debate skills . Public speaking
* Media appearances . Business presentations
* Working under pressure . Individual Assessment
* Leadership . Teamwork . Driving License (category B)

* Serbian (Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrian) - native language
* English - full professional proficiency