He is a tenured professor of information technology with the National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, Romania, and leader/founder of the AI Multimedia Lab with the CAMPUS Research Institute. He holds a double PhD in video processing from Politehnica Bucharest and University of Savoie, France. His research interests cover Artificial Intelligence algorithms, i.e., machine learning, deep learning, information retrieval, for various multimedia applications. He authored/co-authored so far over 280 scientific publications. He serves/served as reviewer for top-tier journals and conferences, as associate editor, as guest editor for journal special issues, as conference chair/technical committee including general chair, as organizer/co-organizer of workshops, as lead organizer/co-organizer for several benchmark campaigns. He contributed to over 48 national/international research grants, strategic programmes, and industry projects with leading companies such as Keysight Technologies, NXP Semiconductors, Xperi/FotoNation, Harman International, out of which to 33 as principal investigator; with over 50M Euros in funding. He also has a long-time experience in coordinating and managing educational and research groups, as director of the Doctoral School of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology at Politehnica Bucharest, as President of the CAMPUS Research Institute, as director of the Politehnica Research & Development and Innovation Institute, or as member of the National Council for Attestation of University Degrees, Diplomas and Certificates, and National Council for Ethics and Management in Higher Education, at the Ministry of National Education, Romania.