Alan Hanjalic

Alan Hanjalic is Professor of Computer Science at Delft University of Technology, holding the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Chair and serving as Head of the Multimedia Computing Group and Head of the Department of Intelligent Systems within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS). Recognized as an IEEE Fellow and AAIA Fellow, he has been a driving force in multimedia information retrieval for over two decades.

Education:

• 1995: Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany (specialization in motion estimation for video compression)
• 1999: PhD in Computer Science, Delft University of Technology (specialization in video indexing and search)

Research Interests:

Prof. Hanjalic’s research spans the broad domain of multimedia information retrieval, with pioneering contributions to affective video content analysis. By modeling videos as trajectories in the arousal-valence emotional space, he enabled indexing and retrieval based on emotional impact, laying the groundwork for an entire subfield. His group further advances socially-responsible recommender systems, cross-modal retrieval and generation, graph learning, and network influence prediction. Recent work also delves into fairness in recommendation and deep-learning-based side-channel security.

Publication Trends:

His latest publications (2024–2025) showcase a diversification into fairness and reproducibility in recommender systems, security-oriented deep learning for side-channel analysis, and advanced metrics for influence prediction in complex networks. These papers reflect both foundational algorithmic contributions and critical validation studies that strengthen the reliability of machine-learning approaches across multimedia and security domains.

Scientific Recognition:

• IEEE Fellow (2016) – for pioneering contributions to multimedia information retrieval
• AAIA Fellow – acknowledging outstanding impact in artificial intelligence and multimedia
• Named Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor – university-wide recognition of research excellence

Education, Mentorship & Leadership:

Over 25 years at TU Delft, Prof. Hanjalic has served as lecturer, course coordinator, and chair of the Computer Science Board of Studies. He has promoted more than 30 PhD students and held leadership roles such as:

• Head, Intelligent Systems Department (2018–present)
• Member, EEMCS Career Development Committee
• Chair, TU Delft central appointment advisory committee for full professors
• Management team member, 4TU.NIRICT (Netherlands Institute for Research on ICT)
• TU Delft representative, ICT Research Platform Netherlands (IPN)

Laboratory & Research Environment:

He founded the Delft Multimedia Information Retrieval (DMIR) Lab, which evolved into the current Multimedia Computing (MMC) section. Under his guidance, the group has led national (FES, BSIK) and European Union projects—including a Network of Excellence—advancing responsible and human-centered multimedia technologies.