Mohtasim Hadi Rafi Successfully Defends M.S. Thesis

Congratulations to Mohtasim Hadi Rafi on the successful defense of his M.S. thesis, "AI-Driven Machine Vision Frameworks for Ornamental Plant Nursery Inventory Management and Disease Phenotyping in Peach Orchards," in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at Auburn University.

 

Advised by Dr. Tanzeel U. Rehman, Rafi's research advances AI-driven computer vision for precision agriculture through scalable and interpretable solutions for ornamental plant inventory management and disease phenotyping in commercial peach orchards. His work introduces novel machine vision frameworks for robust plant tracking and counting under heavy occlusion, accurate 3D plant volume estimation from RGB video, and an interpretable neurosymbolic approach for hyperspectral disease severity assessment under limited labeled data.

 

His thesis committee included Dr. Effat Farhana, Dr. Jeremy Pickens, and Dr. Edgar Vinson.

 

Following the completion of his M.S., Rafi will continue his research in the Smart Systems Engineering Lab as a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Dr. Rehman. He has been awarded the prestigious Charles Gavin Fellowship from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, which will support his doctoral research in AI-enabled agricultural sensing and automation.