Faculty Directory

Biography

Professor Hisham Sager earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering and three master’s degrees: an M.S. in Electrical Engineering with a focus on Information and Systems Sciences, an M.S. in Engineering Management, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering with a focus on Sensing, Communications, and Control. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2015.

In 2016, Dr. Sager joined Mines as a postdoctoral fellow conducting research in computer vision. He subsequently joined the Department of Electrical Engineering as a full-time faculty member and currently serves as a Teaching Associate Professor. Before joining Mines, he worked as an IT engineer for five years.

Education

• BS, Computer Engineering
• MS, Engineering Management
• MS, Electrical Engineering: Sensing, Communications & Control
• MS, Electrical Engineering: Information Systems
• PhD, Electrical Engineering
• Post-Doctoral Fellow, Electrical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines

Research

Dr. Sager’s research interests include embedded systems, image processing, computer vision, signal processing, pattern recognition, pedestrian detection, activity recognition, and human detection in surveillance videos.

His research focuses on detecting people and recognizing human activities in video. In particular, he has conducted and published research on pedestrian detection in low-resolution surveillance videos captured by stationary outdoor cameras mounted on tall buildings and cameras mounted on aerial platforms, such as helicopters and drones. This work has potential applications in industry, academia, and government, including search and rescue, law enforcement, border monitoring, etc.

The images below illustrate results from his research on the automatic detection of people in videos captured by aerial platforms and stationary cameras. The methods were evaluated using standard benchmark datasets.

Sample of research results (video from the Handbook of Robotics): http://handbookofrobotics.org/view-chapter/61/videodetails/678

Publications

• Sager, Hisham, Tufik M. Buzid, and Abdeljawad E. Ramadan. "Is Ultra-Wideband UWB Reconfigurable to Bluetooth?." 2024 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC). IEEE, 2024.
• Buzid, Tufik, Hisham Sager, and Abdeljawad E. Ramadan. "Frequency Domain UWB Receiver Instead of Low Complexity Rake Receiver." In 2023 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC), pp. 1-4. IEEE, 2023.
• Sager, Hisham, Tufik M. Buzid, and Masoud M. Eddaghel. "OFDM lags SC/FDE for Ultra Wideband (UWB) in Context of IoT." In 2021 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC), pp. 1-5. IEEE, 2021.
• Chris Coulston, Hisham Sager, et.al. "The Relationship Between the Cognitive Level of Lab Questions and the Number of Requests for Individual Help", American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), 2019.
• Hisham Sager, W. Hoff "Pedestrian Detection in Low Resolution Videos Using A Multi-Frame Hog-Based Detector." International Research Journal of Computer Science (IRJCS), Issue 03, Vol. 6, pp. 55-71, 2019.
• Contribution to a book: Siciliano, B., and O. Khatib, eds. Springer handbook of robotics. Springer, 2016.
• Hisham Sager, W. Hoff, "Pedestrian Detection in Low Resolution Videos," Proc. WACV IEEE, pp. 668-673, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 2014.

Additional Information

Teaching Interest and Experience

Professor Sager’s primary teaching interests and expertise are in the areas of Electrical Circuits, Electronics & Power, Information Systems Science, Feedback Control Systems, Embedded Systems, Digital Logic, Numerical Analysis and Programming, Microcomputer Architecture & Interfacing, and Data Acquisition/Sensors. For several years Professor Sager has been teaching the following courses in the EE Dept:

• EENG 281: Introduction to Electrical Circuits, Electronics and Power
• EENG 282: Electrical Circuits
• EENG 284: Digital Logic
• EENG 307: Introduction to Feedback Control Systems
• EENG 310: Information Systems Science I
• EENG 311: Information Systems Science II
• EENG 383: Microcomputer Architecture & Interfacing
• EENG 385: Electronic Devices and Circuits
• EENG 350: Electrical Engineering Integration and Design
• EENG 391: Computational Methods for Electrical Engineering
• EENG 411: Digital Signal Processing
• EENG 423: Introduction to VLSI Design
• EENG 437: Computer Vision

In Microcomputer Embedded Systems, Dr. Sager guides 120 to 140 students per term in the assembly and programming of an 8-bit microcontroller in a lab environment. Students also exercise many of the subsystems built into most microcontrollers, including signal generation and acquisition, and a variety of serial data interfaces, interrupts, all programmed in embedded C.

Graduate-Level Courses

• EENG 510: Advanced Digital Signal Processing
• EENG 507: Computer Vision
• MEGN 540: Mechatronics