Oya Aran

Education

PhD: Bogazici University, Department of Computer Engineering, Istanbul, Turkey, 2008

MS: Bogazici University, Department of Computer Engineering, Istanbul, Turkey, 2002

BS: Bogazici University, Department of Computer Engineering, Istanbul, Turkey, 2000

High School: 60.Yil Anadolu Lisesi, Izmir, Turkey, 1996

Current Research Interests

• Social computing, computer vision, machine learning

Past projects

• Multimodal Computational Modeling of Nonverbal Social Behavior in Face to Face Interaction (SOBE), SNSF Ambizione Fellowship Project, 2011 - 2015

• NOVICOM: Automatic Visual Nonverbal Human Behaviour Analysis in Small Group Conversations, EU FP7 Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship project, 2009-2011.

Publications (Link to Google Scholar)

Journals

• FC Weigend, N Kumar, O Aran, HB Amor, WearMoCap: multimodal pose tracking for ubiquitous robot control using a smartwatch, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2025

• Burcu Bakir-Gungor, Hilal Hacılar, Amhar Jabeer, Ozkan Ufuk Nalbantoglu, Oya Aran, Malik Yousef, Inflammatory bowel disease biomarkers of human gut microbiota selected via different feature selection methods, PeerJ 10, e13205, 2022

• Shogo Okada, Laurent Son Nguyen, Oya Aran, and Daniel Gatica-Perez, Modeling Dyadic and Group Impressions with Intermodal and Interperson Features, ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM), vol. 15, no: 2, 2019 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3265754)

• Yunus Emre Kara, Gaye Genç, Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, Actively Estimating Crowd Annotation Consensus , Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, vol. 61, pp. 363-405, 2018 (code)

• Alp Kindiroglu, Lale Akarun, and Oya Aran, Multi-domain and multi-task prediction of extraversion and leadership from meeting videos, EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing, vol. 2017, pp. 77, 2018

• Aleksandra Cerekovic, Oya Aran, and Daniel Gatica-Perez, Rapport with Virtual Agents: What do Human Social Cues and Personality Explain?, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 382-395, 2017

• Umut Avci and Oya Aran, Predicting the Performance in Decision-Making Tasks: From Individual Cues to Group Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 18(4):643--658, 2016

• Yunus Emre Kara, Gaye Genc, Oya Aran, and Lale Akarun, Modeling annotator behaviors for crowd labeling, Neurocomputing, vol. 160, pp. 141-156, 2015 (code)

• Oya Aran, Joan-Isaac Biel and Daniel Gatica-Perez, Broadcasting oneself: Visual Discovery of Vlogging Styles , IEEE Transactions on Multimedia , vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 201-215, 2014

• Dairazalia Sanchez-Cortes, Oya Aran, Marianne Schmid Mast, and Daniel Gatica-Perez, A Nonverbal Behavior Approach to Identify Emergent Leaders in Small Groups, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, vol. 14, no.3-2, pp. 816-832, 2012

• Dairazalia Sanchez-Cortes, Oya Aran, Dinesh Babu Jayagopi, Marianne Schmid Mast, and Daniel Gatica-Perez, Emergent leaders through looking and speaking: from audio-visual data to multimodal recognition, Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, 2012.

• Konstantinos Moustakas, Laila Dybkjaer, Oya Aran, Dimitrios Tzovaras and Niels Ole Bernsen, Using Modality Replacement to Facilitate Communication Between Blind and Hearing Impaired People, IEEE Multimedia , vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 26-37, 2011

• Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, A Multi-class Classification Strategy for Fisher Scores: Application to Signer Independent Sign Language Recognition, Pattern Recognition, vol. 43, no. 5, May 2010. (link)

• Oya Aran, Ismail Ari, Alexandre Benoit, Pavel Campr, Ana Huerta Carrillo, Francois-Xavier Fanard, Lale Akarun, Alice Caplier & Bulent Sankur, SignTutor: An Interactive System for Sign Language Tutoring, IEEE Multimedia, vol. 16, 2009. (link)

• Oya Aran, Thomas Burger, Alice Caplier & Lale Akarun, A Belief-Based Sequential Fusion Approach for Fusing Manual and Non-Manual Signs , Pattern Recognition, vol.42, no.5, 2009.

• Oya Aran, Olcay Taner Yildiz, Ethem Alpaydin, An Incremental Framework Based on Cross-Validation for Estimating the Architecture of a Multilayer Perceptron, International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 23, no. 2, 2009.

• Oya Aran, Ismail Ari, Pavel Campr, Erinc Dikici, Marek Hruz, Siddika Parlak, Lale Akarun & Murat Saraclar, Speech and Sliding Text Aided Sign Retrieval from Hearing Impaired Sign News Videos , Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, vol.2, pp.117-131, Springer, 2008. (The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com: link)

• S. Argyropoulos, K. Moustakas, A. Karpov, O. Aran, D. Tzovaras, T. Tsakiris, G. Varni & B. Kwon, A Multimodal Framework for the Communication of the Disabled, Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, vol.2, pp.105-116, Springer, 2008.

• Alice Caplier, Sebastien Stillittano, Oya Aran, Lale Akarun, Gerard Bailly, Denis Beautemps, Nouredine Aboutabit & Thomas Burger, Image and video for hearing impaired people, EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing, Special Issue on Image and Video Processing for Disability, 2007.

Book Chapters

• D. Gatica-Perez, O. Aran, and D. Jayagopi, Small Group Analysis, in J. Burgoon, N. Magnenat-Thalmann, M. Pantic, and A. Vinciarelli (Eds.) Social Signal Processing, Cambridge University Press, pp.349-367, 2017 (link to the book)

• Oya Aran, Ismail Ari, Alp Kindiroglu, Pinar Santemiz and Lale Akarun, Otomatik Isaret Dili Tanıma ve Turk Isaret Dili icin Bilgisayar Uygulamalari, in Ellerle Konusmak: Turk Isaret Dili Arastirmalari / Research on Turkish Sign Language, pp. 471-498, Arik, E. (ed.), Koc University Press, 2016

• O. Aran & D. Gatica-Perez, Analysis of Group Conversations: Modeling Social Verticality, in Computer Analysis of Human Behavior, pp. 293-322, Salah, A. A. & Gevers, T.(ed.), Springer London, 2011.

• C. Keskin, O. Aran & L. Akarun, Hand Gesture Analysis, in Computer Analysis of Human Behavior, pp. 125-149, Salah, A. A. & Gevers, T.(ed.), Springer London , 2011.

• Oya Aran, Thomas Burger, Lale Akarun & Alice Caplier, Gestural Interfaces for Hearing-Impaired Communication, in Multimodal user interfaces: from signals to interaction, Dimitrios Tzovaras (Ed.) Springer, 2008. (The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com: link)
  
  

International Conferences and Workshops

• N Kumar, O Aran, Automated Measurement of Eczema Severity with Self-Supervised Learning, IEEE EMBC 2025

• N Kumar, O Aran, V Vasudevan, Visual In-Context Learning for Few-Shot Eczema Segmentation, IEEE EMBC 2024

• FC Weigend, N Kumar, O Aran, HB Amor, Ubiquitous Robot Control Through Multimodal Motion Capture Using Smartwatch and Smartphone Data, Arxiv, 2024

• Baculo, M.J.C., Ruiz, C., Aran, O., Cecid Fly Defect Detection in Mangoes Using Object Detection Frameworks. In: Advances in Computer Graphics. CGI 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13002. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89029-2_16, 2021

• Sandrine Tornay, Oya Aran, Mathew Magimai-Doss, An HMM Approach with Inherent Model Selection for Sign Language and Gesture Recognition, LREC 2020, 2020

• Umut Avci, Oya Aran, Analyzing group performance in small group interaction: Linking personality traits and group performance through the verbal content, 6th International Workshop on Context Based Affect Recognition CBAR @ FG 2019, 2019

• Berkay Aydin, Alp Kindiroglu, Oya Aran, Lale Akarun, Automatic Personality Prediction from Audiovisual Data Using Random Forest Regression, International Conference On Pattern Recognition (ICPR'16), Cancun, Mexico , 2016

• Oya Aran, Dairazalia Sanchez-Cortes, Minh-Tri Do, Daniel Gatica-Perez, Anomaly Detection in Elderly Daily Behavior in Ambient Sensing Environments, ACM MM Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU 2016), 2016

• Shogo Okada, Oya Aran and Daniel Gatica-Perez, Personality Trait Classification via Co-Occurrent Multiparty Multimodal Event Discovery, ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2015), Seattle, WA, USA, pages 15-22, 2015.

• Umut Avci, Oya Aran, Effect of nonverbal behavioral patterns on the performance of small groups, ICMI Workshop on Understanding and Modeling Multiparty Multimodal Interactions, ICMI 2014, Istanbul, Turkey, 2014

• Aleksandra Cerekovic, Oya Aran, Daniel Gatica-Perez, How Do You Like Your Virtual Agent?: Human-Agent Interaction Experience through Nonverbal Features and Personality Traits, ICCV Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU 2014), 2014

• Oya Aran and Daniel Gatica-Perez, One of a Kind: Inferring Personality Impressions in Meetings, 15th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Sydney, Australia (ICMI 2013), 2013

• Oya Aran and Daniel Gatica-Perez, Cross-Domain Personality Prediction: From Video Blogs to Small Group Meetings, 15th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Sydney, Australia (ICMI 2013), 2013

• Albert Ali Salah, Hayley Hung, Oya Aran, Hatice Gunes, Creative Applications of Human Behavior Understanding, ACM MM Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU 2014), 2013

• Kyriaki Kalimeri, Bruno Lepri, Oya Aran, Dinesh Babu Jayagopi, Daniel Gatica-Perez and Fabio Pianesi, Modeling dominance effects on nonverbal behaviors using granger causality, International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, ICMI 2012, Santa Monica, CA, 2012.

• D. Sanchez-Cortes, O. Aran, D. Gatica-Perez, An audio visual corpus for emergent leader analysis, ICMI workshop on Multimodal Corpora for Machine Learning, Alicante, 2011.

• J.-I. Biel, O. Aran, D. Gatica-Perez, You Are Known by How You Vlog: Personality Impressions and Nonverbal Behavior in YouTube, AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), Washington DC, May 2011 .

• G. Chittaranjan, O. Aran, and D. Gatica-Perez, Exploiting Observers' Judgments for Nonverbal Group Interaction Analysis, IEEE Int. Conf. on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), Santa Barbara, 2011.

• D. Sanchez-Cortes, O. Aran, M. Schmid-Mast, D. Gatica-Perez, Identifying Emergent Leadership in Small Groups using Nonverbal Communicative Cues,12th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces and 7th Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction (ICMI-MLMI'10), Bejing, China, 2010.

• O. Aran, D. Gatica-Perez, Fusing Audio-Visual Nonverbal Cues to Detect Dominant People in Conversations,International Conference On Pattern Recognition (ICPR'10), Istanbul, Turkey, 2010.

• Oya Aran, Hayley Hung, Daniel Gatica-Perez, A Multimodal Corpus for Studying Dominance in Small Group Conversations, LREC workshop on Multimodal Corpora: Advances in Capturing, Coding and Analyzing Multimodality, Malta, May 2010, accepted.

• Ilker Yildirim, Oya Aran, Pinar Yolum, & Lale Akarun, Cooperative Sign Language Tutoring: A Multiagent Approach, 10th Annual International Workshop Engineering Societies in the Agents' World (ESAW'09), 2009. (Best paper award)

• Pinar Santemiz, Oya Aran, Murat Saraclar, Lale Akarun, Automatic Sign Segmentation from Continuous Signing via Multiple Sequence Alignment, the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV'09) - Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction, Kyoto, Japan, 2009.

• Pavel Campr, Marek Hruz, Alexey Karpov, Pinar Santemiz, Milos Zelezny, and Oya Aran, Input and output modalities used in a sign-language-enabled information kiosk, 13th International Conference on Speech and Computer (SPECOM'09), pp.113-116, St.Petersburg, Russia, 2009.

• Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, Multi-class Classification Strategies for Fisher Scores of Gesture and Sign Sequences, International Conference On Pattern Recognition (ICPR'08), 2008

• Oya Aran, Ismail Ari, Pavel Campr, Erinc Dikici, Marek Hruz, Deniz Kahramaner, Siddika Parlak, Lale Akarun & Murat Saraclar, Speech and Sliding Text Aided Sign Retrieval from Hearing Impaired Sign News Videos , eNTERFACE'07 The Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces, Istanbul, Turkey, 2007

• Oya Aran, Thomas Burger, Alice Caplier & Lale Akarun, Sequential Belief Based Fusion of Manual and Non-manual Signs , The 7th International Workshop on Gesture in Human-Computer Interaction and Simulation (GW 2007), 2007

• Thomas Burger, Alexandra Urankar, Oya Aran, Lale Akarun & Alice Caplier, Cued Speech Hand Shape Recognition , 2nd International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (VISAPP'07), Spain, 2007

• Cem Keskin, Koray Balci, Oya Aran, Bulent Sankur & Lale Akarun, A Multimodal 3D Healthcare Communication System , 3DTV Conference, 2007

• Oya Aran, Ismail Ari, Alexandre Benoit, Pavel Campr, Ana Huerta Carrillo, François-Xavier Fanard, Lale Akarun, Alice Caplier, Michele Rombaut & Bulent Sankur, Sign Language Tutoring Tool, eNTERFACE 2006, The Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces, Dubrovnik, Croatia, , 23-33 2006

• Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, Recognizing Two Handed Gestures with Generative, Discriminative and Ensemble Methods via Fisher Kernels , Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Multimedia Content Representation, Classification and Security International Workshop, MRCS 2006, Istanbul, Turkey, September 11-13, 2006, Proceedings, , 4015 , 159-166 2006

• Thomas Burger, Oya Aran & Alice Caplier, Modeling hesitation and conflict: A belief-based approach for multi-class problems , International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA'06), Florida, 2006

• Mehmet Emre Sargin, Oya Aran, Alexey Karpov, Ferda Ofli, Yelena Yasinnik, Stephen Wilson, Engin Erzin, Yucel Yemez & A. Murat Tekalp, Gesture-Speech Correlation Analysis and Speech Driven Gesture Synthesis , IEEE International Conference on Multimedia, Expo (ICME'06), Toronto, 2006

• Oya Aran, Cem Keskin & Lale Akarun, Sign Language Tutoring Tool , European Signal Processing Conference, EUSIPCO'05, Antalya, Turkey, 2005

• Cem Keskin, Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, Real Time Gestural Interface For Generic Applications , European Signal Processing Conference, EUSIPCO'05, Antalya, Turkey, 2005

• Mehmet Emre Sargin, Ferda Ofli, Yelena Yasinnik, Oya Aran, Alexey Karpov, Stephen Wilson, Yucel Yemez, Engin Erzin & A. Murat Tekalp, Combined Gesture-Speech Analysis and Synthesis , Proceedings of eNTERFACE 2005, The Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces, Faculte Polytechnique de Mons, Belgium, 2005

• Oya Aran & Ethem Alpaydin, An Incremental Neural Network Construction Algorithm for Training Multilayer Perceptrons , ICANN/ICONIP'03, 2003
  
  

National Conferences

• P. Santemiz, O. Aran, M. Saraclar, L. Akarun, Alignment Based Extraction of Isolated Signs from Sign Language Videos, IEEE 17th Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU'09), Antalya, Turkey, 2009.

• Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, A Particle Filter Based Algorithm for Robust Tracking of Hands and Face Under Occlusion, IEEE 16th Signal Processing and Communications Applications (SIU 2008), 2008

• Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, Sign Language Processing and Interactive Tools for Sign Language Education , IEEE 15th Signal Processing and Communications Applications (SIU 2007), 2007

• Oya Aran, Ismail Ari, Amac Guvensan, Hakan Haberdar, Zeyneb Kurt, Irem Turkmen, Asli Uyar & Lale Akarun, A Database of Non-Manual Signs in Turkish Sign Language , IEEE 15th Signal Processing and Communications Applications (SIU'07), 2007

• Oya Aran & Lale Akarun, Combination Strategies for 2D Features to Recognize 3D Gestures , IEEE 14th Signal Processing and Communications Applications (SIU 2006), 2006

• Oya Aran, Cem Keskin & Lale Akarun, Engelliler icin Bilgisayar Uygulamalari ve Isaret Dili Egitimi , GAP V. Muhendislik Kongresi Bildiriler Kitabi, 2006
  
  

Thesis

• Oya Aran, Vision Based Sign Language Recognition: Modeling and Recognizing Isolated Signs With Manual and Non-manual Components, PhD Thesis, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2008

• Oya Aran, Incremental Neural Network Construction Algorithms for Training Multilayer Perceptrons, MS Thesis, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2002