Niloufar (Nila) Alipour Talemi

Computer Vision | Machine Learning | Vision-Language Models

Welcome to my homepage!

I am a Research Associate within the IS-WiN Lab at Clemson University. My research centers on efficient, robust, and generalizable adaptation of vision-language models and multimodal large language models for real-world visual intelligence. I develop methods for prompt learning, parameter-efficient model adaptation, and reliable multimodal reasoning, with applications in anomaly detection under domain shifts, wildfire monitoring, medical image analysis, low-quality face recognition in unconstrained environments, and spectral bias mitigation in forensic models.

profile photo

News

  • [2026/05] Recognized as a Silver Reviewer for ICML 2026.
  • [2026/05] Hyper-ICL, our recent work on efficient and stable multimodal ICL, has been accepted to ICML 2026.
  • [2026/04] WildFireVQA has been accepted to CVPR-W 2026.
  • [2026/03] Successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation.
  • [2026/03] Our recent paper on wildfire monitoring, FlameVQA, has been accepted to IGARSS 2026.
  • [2026/01] Our recent work, Agentic AI in Remote Sensing, has been accepted to WACV-W 2026.
  • [2025/09] Successfully passed Comprehensive Exam.
  • [2025/06] Started Ph.D. AI/ML Internship at Sonatus Inc.
  • [2025/05] Received the CVPR 2025 Travel Award.
  • [2025/05] Our recent work, DiSa, a novel prompt learning framework, has been accepted to SIGKDD 2025.
  • [2025/02] Our recent work, FreqDebias, has been accepted to CVPR 2025.
  • [2025/01] Received the WACV 2025 Travel Award.
  • [2024/11] Successfully passed Qualifying Exam.
  • [2024/10] Two papers have been accepted to WACV 2025.
  • [2024/04] Our recent work CATFace is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science.
  • [2023/09] Our new method on Morph Attack Detection has been accepted by IJCB 2023.
  • [2023/06] AAFace is accepted to IEEE ICIP 2023 as an oral presentation.


Talks

Generalizable Vision-Language Models (University of Louisville)
Attribute-aware Attentional Network for Face Recognition
Women in AI

Event Link



Reviewer Service

It has been an honor to serve as a reviewer for over 100 papers across prestigious academic conferences and journals in computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and biomedical computing.

Conferences:

  • The British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), 2026
  • Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025-2026
  • International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026 — Silver Reviewer
  • IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2023-2026
  • European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2026
  • ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD), 2025
  • IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023, 2025
  • Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2024-2025
  • IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2024-2025

Journals:

  • Knowledge-Based Systems
  • Computers in Biology and Medicine
  • ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare
  • IEEE Access


Publications



Image of Hyper-ICL Paper
Hyper-ICL: Attention Calibration with Hyperbolic Anchor Distillation for Multimodal In-Context Learning.
NA Talemi, H Kashiani, F Afghah
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.
arxiv / Poster/ Slides

We propose Hyper-ICL, a lightweight framework for demonstration-free multimodal in-context learning that reconstructs demonstration effects through logit-level attention calibration, query-adaptive modulation, and layer-wise hyperbolic anchor distillation.

Image of WildFireVQA Paper
WildFireVQA: A Large-Scale Radiometric Thermal VQA Benchmark for Aerial Wildfire Monitoring.
M Habibpour, NA Talemi, J Spodnik, CJ Khoury, F Afghah
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPR-W), 2026.
arxiv / code

We introduce WildFireVQA, the first visual question answering benchmark designed specifically for aerial wildfire monitoring. Built on aligned RGB images, color-mapped thermal visualizations, and radiometric thermal TIFFs, WildFireVQA enables temperature-grounded multimodal reasoning for safety-critical wildfire intelligence, including fire detection, hotspot localization, cross-modal interpretation, and UAV flight planning.

Image of Agentic Paper
Agentic AI in Remote Sensing: Foundations, Taxonomy, and Emerging Systems.
NA Talemi, J Boone, F Afghah
Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, GeoCV Workshop, 2026.
arxiv / CVF / Video

We present the first comprehensive survey of agentic AI in remote sensing, defining a unified taxonomy of single- and multi-agent systems and outlining how planning, tool use, and memory enable autonomous geospatial intelligence beyond static models.

Image of Style-Pro Paper
DiSa: Directional Saliency-Aware Prompt Learning for Generalizable Vision-Language Models.
NA Talemi, H Kashiani, H Rajoli, F Afghah
ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), 2025.
arxiv / ACM / Poster

We propose a novel directional saliency-aware prompt learning framework designed to enhance the adaptability and generalization of vision-language models.

Image of FreqDebias Paper
FreqDebias: Towards Generalizable Deepfake Detection via Consistency-Driven Frequency Debiasing.
H Kashiani, NA Talemi , F Afghah
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2025.
CVF / IEEE / Poster

We propose FreqDebias, a frequency debiasing framework that mitigates spectral bias in deepfake detection through Forgery Mixup augmentation and dual consistency regularization, improving cross-domain generalization.

Image of Style-Pro Paper
Style-Pro: Style-Guided Prompt Learning for Generalizable Vision-Language Models.
NA Talemi, H Kashiani, F Afghah
IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2025.
arxiv / CVF / IEEE / Poster

We propose a style-guided prompt learning framework to enhance generalization in Vision-Language models.

Image of ROADS Paper
ROADS: Robust Prompt-driven Multi-Class Anomaly Detection under Domain Shift.
H Kashiani, NA Talemi , F Afghah
IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2025.
arxiv / CVF / IEEE / Poster

We propose a robust multi-class anomaly detection framework with a class-aware prompt integration mechanism to mitigate inter-class interference and a domain adapter to handle domain shifts.

CATFace
CATFace: Cross-Attribute-Guided Transformer With Self-Attention Distillation for Low-Quality Face Recognition.
NA Talemi, H Kashiani, NM Nasrabadi
IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science, 2024.
arxiv / IEEE / bibtex

We propose a novel multi-branch neural network with cross-attribute-guided fusion and self-attention distillation, improving face recognition in low-quality images using soft biometric attributes.

AAFACE AAFACE: Attribute-aware Attentional Network for Face Recognition.
NA Talemi , H Kashiani, and 4 more authors
IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2023.
arxiv / IEEE / bibtex / Poster

We present a multi-branch network using attribute-aware integration to enhance face recognition through soft biometric prediction.

Morph Attack Detection
Towards Generalizable Morph Attack Detection with Consistency Regularization.
H Kashiani, NA Talemi, NM Nasrabadi
IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB), 2023.
arxiv / IEEE / bibtex / Poster / code

We propose consistency regularization to enhance the generalization of morph attack detection through morph-wise augmentations to enhance robustness against unseen morph attacks in biometric systems.

Face Quality Vector Face Image Quality Vector Assessment for Biometrics Applications.
N Najafzadeh, H Kashiani, MSE Saadabadi, NA Talemi, and 2 more authors
Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, 2023.
CVF / IEEE / bibtex

This paper proposes a multi-task neural network that generates a face quality vector, including nuisance factors, offering improved performance and detailed feedback for face image quality assessment.

brain tumor Superpixel-based brain tumor segmentation in MR images using an extended local fuzzy active contour model.
NA Talemi, RPR Hasanzadeh
Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2021.
Springer / bibtex

This paper introduces a novel region-based fuzzy active contour model, leveraging curve evolution techniques, for brain tumor segmentation in magnetic resonance images, effectively addressing challenges arising from noise and heterogeneity.