Asim Munawar

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Professional Associations:  IEEE Member  |  ACM

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Profile

Short Bio

Dr. Asim Munawar is a Program Director for Neuro-Symbolic AI at IBM Research. Dr. Munawar received his PhD from Hokkaido University, Japan in evolutionary algorithms. He joined IBM Research in 2012 and has been working in the field of deep learning since 2013. Dr. Munawar has led many deep learning-related research projects and customer engagements in various application domains including but not limited to computer vision, robotics, acoustic analysis, and NLP. His main research interest is the creation of next-generation AI by combining symbolic knowledge and reasoning with data driven learning methods. He is also interested in learning techniques that better mimic the learning process in a human brain. This include low power neuromorphic computing with spiking neural networks and model-free/model-based reinforcement learning algorithms that can learn from weak reward signals. Dr. Munawar has over 50 publications in international journals and peer-reviewed conferences.

Awards & Certifications

Best Paper Awards

• SSII, Japan (2019)
• IEEE SCC, San Francisco, USA (July 2018)
• SIG-ECF, Sapporo, Japan (Oct 2010)

Academic Awards

• Japan Govt MEXT scholarship for MS and PhD year 2005-2011
• Pakistan Govt MOST scholarship for BE year 1999-2003
• Winner of all Pakistan 6th Inter Universities Software Exhibition & Competition 2004 on design and demo of a mobile ad hoc network protocol and its applications
• Merit certificate for BE (2003)
• Winner of Softcom 2002 quiz competition
• Complementary prize in all Pakistan 2nd Inter Universities Software Exhibition & Competition 2000 on developing an electronic circuit solver

Professional Awards

• Sun Campus Ambassador of the Month for March 2009 (a recognition of the work I did at Hokkaido University has more impact than the work done by other campus ambassadors in major Universities in Japan)
• IBM Technical Master (TM) - Jan 2017
• IBM Technical Expert (TE) - Oct 2014

Certifications

• Acclaim Badges: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/asim-munawar
• IBM Certified Manager (2020) – verifiable on Acclaim
• Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner (2017) – verifiable on Acclaim
• Industrial robot safety certificate of completion, Occupational Health and Safety Rule 36, Paragraph 31, Japan (2016)
• Sun Certified Associate for Java Platform, Standard Edition (2010)

Invited Talks

• Keynote speaker at IEEE ICAI 2021, Apr 2021
• Science Slam on Safe Reinforcement Learning, Think Japan, Tokyo Japan, June 2018
• Genetic Algorithms and Applications, SEECS, NUST, Islamabad Pakistan, Sept 2010
• Study in Japan, IEEE Society, CEME, NUST, Rawalpindi Pakistan, Nov 2007