Cihan Topal

Cihan Topal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering at Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Computer and Informatics. He has previously held academic positions at Eskişehir Technical University and Anadolu University in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He also served as a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey's Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) from 2019 to 2020.

His research interests span a wide range of topics in computer science and artificial intelligence, including Computer Vision, Image Processing, Deep Learning, Semantic Segmentation, Edge Detection, and Human-Computer Interaction. His work emphasizes both theoretical innovation and practical applications in industrial and medical imaging.

His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on semantic segmentation, defect detection, domain adaptation, and deepfake detection, often leveraging attention mechanisms and spectral methods. He has led research on GPU-accelerated image filtering and developed novel edge detection algorithms such as Edge Drawing.

• IEEE Member (2005–2017)
• Former R&D Director and Co-founder at Visea Innovative IT Technologies
• Industry experience at Siemens Corporate Research

Dr. Topal has advised numerous graduate students on topics related to AI and image analysis. He is currently leading a research project on 3D semantic segmentation of medical images using a novel 2D convolution-based ESA architecture. His scholarly output includes over 60 publications with significant citations, reflecting an active and impactful research trajectory.