Md Zahid Hasan

Graduate Research Assistant

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Email: zahid@iastate.edu

About Me

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University. I work in the Self-aware Complex Systems Lab under the supervision of Dr. Soumik Sarkar and Dr. Baskar Ganapathysubramanian.

My research focuses on adapting AI foundation models and agents to real-world, human-centric systems, where data is multimodal, multi-source and requires limited supervision. I have worked on finetuning vision-language models (VLMs) for data-efficient perception, RL-guided informative data generation to improve spatial reasoning in VLMs, and tool-grounded LLM agents that turn complex scientific data into interpretable decisions. My research applications domain span autonomous driving, cognitive health screening, agriculture, engineering design and scientific discovery.

Download my curriculum vitae. Feel free to reach out for any discussion.

Research Interest

Human-centric AI in Autonomous Systems
Computer Vision & Multimodal Learning
Generative AI-based Multi-agent Workflows
Optimized Finetuning (Speed & Scale) of AI Foundation Models

Education

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (2021 - 2026)

Iowa State University, Ames, IA

Thesis: "Advancing Human-centric Autonomous Systems via AI Foundation Models"
M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering (2023 - 2024)

Iowa State University, Ames, IA
B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (2014 - 2018)

Bangladesh University of Eng. & Tech., Bangladesh

Experience

Agentic AI Research Intern

Corteva Agriscience

Supervisor: Jeremiah Barr

Topic: Building AI Agents for yield deviation explanation

March 2026 – Present Johnston, IA

Research Assistant

Self-aware Complex System Lab, Iowa State University

Supervisor: Dr. Soumik Sarkar

Topic: Efficient finetuning of AI foundation models for human-centric applications

June 2021 – March 2026 Ames, IA

Machine Learning Research Intern

RTX Corporation

Supervisor:

Kunal Srivastava, Senior Manager

Soumalya Sarkar, Principal Research Scientist

Topic: Spatial Reasoning & 3D Understanding of MLLM for Engineering Design

June 2025 – September 2025 East Hartford, CT

Teaching Assistant

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University

Supervisor: Vicky Thorland-Oster

Courses: EE 526 (Deep Learning), EE 422 (Communication Systems II), EE 423 (Communication Systems Lab), EE 332 (Semiconductor Materials & Devices)

Jan 2021 – May 2021 Ames, IA

Publications

Driving Analysis & Cognitive Health

Vision-Language Models Can Identify Distracted Driver Behavior From Naturalistic Videos

Md Zahid Hasan, Jiajing Chen, Jiyang Wang, Mohammed Shaiqur Rahman, Ameya Joshi, Senem Velipasalar, Chinmay Hegde, Anuj Sharma, Soumik Sarkar

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2024.

Roadway weather challenges illuminate real-world driving biomarkers of dementia risk

Md Zahid Hasan, Guillermo Basulto-Elias, Russell Kai Liang Tan, Jun Ha Chang, Soumik Sarkar, Anuj Sharma, Shauna Hallmark, Matthew Rizzo, Jennifer Merickel

Alzheimer's & Dementia (2023)

DriveCLIP: Zero-shot transfer for distracted driving activity understanding using CLIP

Md Zahid Hasan, Ameya Joshi, Mohammed Rahman, Archana Venkatachelapathy, Chinmay Hegde, Anuj Sharma, Soumik Sarkar

36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022) Workshop on Machine Learning for Autonomous Driving, New Orleans, LA, 2022.

Driving as a screening aid: Scenario-based cognitive assessment in older drivers from driving video

Md Zahid Hasan, Guillermo Basulto-Elias, Jun HaChang, Shauna Hallmark, Matthew Rizzo, Anuj Sharma, Soumik Sarkar

Artificial Intelligence for Transportation (AI4T 2026), Volume 7, 100067, Elsevier.

Autonomous Systems & Safety

RLS3: RL-Based Synthetic Sample Selection to Enhance Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models for Indoor Autonomous Perception

Joshua R. Waite, Md Zahid Hasan, Qisai Liu, Chinmay Hegde, Soumik Sarkar

16th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS 2025), Irvine, CA, 2025.

GENESIS-RL: GEnerating Natural Edge-cases with Systematic Integration of Safety considerations and Reinforcement Learning

Hsin-Jung Yang, Joe Beck, Md Zahid Hasan, Ekin Beyazit, Subhadeep Chakraborty, Tichakorn Wongpiromsarn, Soumik Sarkar

2024 IEEE International Automated Vehicle Validation Conference (IAVVC 2024), Pittsburgh, PA, 2024.

SCOPE: Spatially-Constrained Parametric Editing for Text-Guided CAD Models

Md Zahid Hasan, Soumalya Sarkar

First Workshop on Efficient Spatial Reasoning at ICLR 2026, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Efficient Reasoning

FROST: Filtering Reasoning Outliers with Attention for Efficient Reasoning

Haozheng Luo, Zhuolin Jiang, Md Zahid Hasan, Yan Chen, Soumalya Sarkar

14th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Optimization & Foundations

Balancing Utility and Privacy: Dynamically Private SGD with Random Projection

Zhanhong Jiang, Md Zahid Hasan, Nastaran Saadati, Aditya Balu, Chao Liu, Soumik Sarkar

Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR 2025)

FUSE: First-Order and Second-Order Unified SynthEsis in Stochastic Optimization

Zhanhong Jiang, Md Zahid Hasan, Aditya Balu, Joshua R Waite, Genyi Huang, Soumik Sarkar

IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IEEE CAI 2025), Santa Clara, CA, 2025.

Datasets & Benchmarks

BioTrove: A Large Curated Image Dataset Enabling AI for Biodiversity

Chih-Hsuan Yang*, Benjamin Feuer*, Talukder Zaki Jubery, Zi K. Deng, Andre Nakkab, Md Zahid Hasan, Shivani Chiranjeevi, Kelly O. Marshall, Nirmal Baishnab, Asheesh K Singh, Arti Singh, Soumik Sarkar, Nirav Merchant, Chinmay Hegde, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian

38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024) Track on Datasets and Benchmarks (Spotlight)

Services

Peer Reviewer

Conferences

Journals (Impact Factor)

Medical Image Analysis 11.8
IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems 8.4
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 8.0
Transportation Research Part D 7.7
Pattern Recognition 7.6
Neurocomputing 6.5
Computers and Electrical Engineering 4.9
Digital Health 3.3

Invited Talks

"An overview of Vision-Language models." at Translational AI Center (TrAC), Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA (Nov 16th, 2022).
"When and why vision-language models behave like bags-of-words, and what to do about it?" at Student Journal Club: TrAC, Iowa State University, Ames, IA (2023).

Leadership Roles

Assistant Secretary

Graduate Organization of Electrical and Computer Engineering (GOECpE), Iowa State

Fostered social interactions and professional development among Iowa State ECE students
Organized fundraising initiatives for student engagement events
Coordinated workshops and seminars to enhance student skill sets and networking opportunities

Senator

Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS), Iowa State

Elected to Student Government by the Iowa State graduate student body
Represented the graduate and professional student body as a whole on the Student Government
Developed and disseminated ideas for the improvement of graduate and professional education

Cultural Ambassador

Iowa State International Students and Scholars Office

Facilitated meaningful cross-cultural connections, bridging international and U.S. students
Developed cross-cultural skills and community inclusive skills
Enriched understanding of diverse perspectives while supporting cultural exploration

Graduate Member

Iowa State IEEE-HKN: Nu Chapter

Conducted helproom sessions to support undergraduate students in academic challenges
Led weekly discussions to foster a collaborative learning environment

Volunteer

Iowa State Bangladesh Student Association

Assisted in planning and execution of community events and cultural celebrations
Supported new members by providing resources and guidance for onboarding

Volunteer

American Red Cross Iowa Region