I am a Machine Learning Engineer at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at RPTU Kaiserslautern–Landau, supervised by Prof. Dr. Didier Stricker. My doctoral research is funded by the the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). My research advances robust and efficient visual perception, with a focus on semi-supervised learning, document intelligence, and object detection in challenging and low-annotation environments. My work has resulted in first-author publications at premier venues including CVPR, ICCV and ICDAR.
At DFKI, I lead research across multiple large-scale applied AI projects including semi-supervised object detection for complex 2D environments, a high-precision multimodal system for document layout analysis under the LUMINOUS project, and medical anomaly detection pipelines for the AIRISE initiative. I also completed an Applied AI Scientist internship at Tensorlake, San Francisco, where I worked on document intelligence systems, led VLM integration for document analysis, and developed data generation and post-processing pipelines for improving document layout, OCR accuracy, and strikethrough detection.
My research focuses on multimodal perception, data-efficient learning, and transformer architectures, with a long-term goal of enabling agentic AI systems that can autonomously understand, reason, and act based on visual information.
Projects
Target: Small, Occluded, and Rare Objects
Generic Object Detection in Challenging Visual Environments
This project focuses on improving detection reliability for objects that are small, heavily occluded, or belong to visually rare categories. Traditional detectors often struggle when objects occupy only a few pixels, appear partially hidden, or lack strong representation in the training distribution. The system enhances spatial reasoning for dense scenes, recovers obscured object cues using contextual priors, and stabilizes category confidence for infrequent visual classes. This results in consistent performance across crowded environments, long-tail distributions, and real-world edge cases where conventional object detectors tend to fail.
Target: Document parsing
Unified Document Parsing with Fine-Grained Element Detection
This project focuses on improving detection reliability in complex document images containing diverse and densely arranged visual components. The system enhances spatial reasoning for dense layouts, integrates contextual priors to improve structural coherence, and stabilizes category confidence for components that typically challenge OCR and downstream document understanding. Beyond conventional layout elements such as text blocks, tables, figures, and forms, the pipeline supports citation extraction, handwritten and digital signature detection, strikethrough identification and removal, stamp and watermark localization, and other fine-grained document objects that are crucial for legal, academic, and financial document processing.
STEP-DETR: Advancing DETR-based Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Super Teacher and Pseudo-Label Guided Text QueriesT. Shehzadi, K.A.Hashmi, S.Sarode, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICCV, 2025
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BibTeX
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@InProceedings{Shehzadi_2025_ICCV,
author = {Shehzadi, Tahira and Hashmi, Khurram Azeem and Sarode, Shalini and Stricker, Didier and Afzal, Muhammad Zeshan},
title = {STEP-DETR: Advancing DETR-based Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Super Teacher and Pseudo-Label Guided Text Queries},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)},
month = {October},
year = {2025},
pages = {3069-3079}
}
Sparse Semi-DETR: Sparse Learnable Queries for Semi-Supervised Object DetectionT. Shehzadi, K.A.Hashmi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
CVPR, 2024
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Poster
Object Detection with Transformers: A ReviewT. Shehzadi, K.A.Hashmi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
Sensors, 2025
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Code
SemiTabDETR: End-to-End Semi-Supervised Table Detection with Transformer-based Enhanced Query ApproachT. Shehzadi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICDAR, 2025
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Efficient Additive Attention for Transformer-based Semi-supervised Document Layout AnalysisT. Shehzadi, I.Ifza, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICCV Workshop, 2025
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Classroom-Inspired Multi-mentor Distillation with Adaptive Learning Strategies
S.Sarode, M.S.Khan,T. Shehzadi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
IntelliSys, 2025
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DocSemi: Efficient Document Layout Analysis with Guided QueriesT. Shehzadi, I.Ifza, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICCV Workshop, 2025
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FD-SSD: Semi-supervised Detection of Bone Fenestration and Dehiscence in Intraoral ImagesT. Shehzadi, I.Ifza, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
MIUA, 2025
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A Hybrid Approach for Document Layout Analysis in Document imagesT. Shehzadi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICDAR, 2024
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Towards End-to-End Semi-Supervised Table Detection with Semantic Aligned Matching TransformerT. Shehzadi, S.Sarode, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICDAR, 2024
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Enhanced Bank Check Security: Introducing a Novel Dataset and Transformer-Based Approach for Detection and Verification
M.S.Khan*, T. Shehzadi*, R.Noor, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICDAR Workshop, 2024
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Code
End-to-End Semi-Supervised approach with Modulated Object Queries for Table Detection in Documents
I.Ehsan,T. Shehzadi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
IJDAR, 2024
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UnSupDLA: Towards Unsupervised Document Layout Analysis
T.Sheikh*, T. Shehzadi*, R.Noor, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICDAR Workshop, 2024
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Semi-Supervised Object Detection: A Survey on Progress from CNN to TransformerT. Shehzadi, I.Ifza, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
arXiv, 2024
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Towards End-to-End Semi-Supervised Table Detection with Deformable TransformerT. Shehzadi, K.A.Hashmi, M.Liwicki, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
ICDAR, 2023
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Mask-Aware Semi-Supervised Object Detection in Floor PlansT. Shehzadi, K.A.Hashmi, D.Stricker, M.Z.Afzal
Sensors, 2022
Paper
Geometric features and traffic dynamic analysis on 4-leg intersections
W.Saeed, M.S.Saleh, M.N.Gull, H.Raza, R.Saeed, T. Shehzadi International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering (IRASE), 2021
Paper
Protein Active Site Prediction for Early Drug Discovery and Designing
A.Yousaf, T. Shehzadi, A.Farooq, Komal Ilyas
International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering (IRASE), 2021
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Intelligent predictor using cancer-related biologically information extraction from cancer transcriptomesT. Shehzadi, A.Majid, M.Hameed, A.Farooq, A.Yousaf
Recent Advances in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences (RAEE & CS), 2020
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Services
Reviewer of Conferences:
ICDAR2025, MIUA2025, WACV2025
Honors & Awards
DAAD Fellowship: Received PhD Scholarship (2021–2026)
NSF Travel Grant: For WiML Workshop at NeurIPS 2024
PIEAS Fellowship: Received merit based full scholarship for complete Masters
Nominated for the Two Academic Excellence Medals 2014 in Intermediate Studies