Youssef M. Hussein

A PhD Candidate @Data Management Lab University of Minnesota . Personal Moto: Why? Because I want to be the best!.

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👋 Hi, I’m Youssef Hussein

I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, advised by Prof. Mohamed Mokbel at the Data Management Lab.
My research focuses on spatial data systems, large-scale data management, and the intersection of databases and AI, especially LLM evaluation for spatial data applications. I have publications in top-tier venues as VLDB, SIGSPATIAL, MDM, and NeurIPS.




💼 Experience Highlights

🔬 Research
  • Research Intern — GeoAI Team @ Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Apr 2026 – Aug 2026
    • Conducted research with the GeoAI team on AI and geospatial data applications.
    • Contributed to research on multimodal Earth observation data and agentic reasoning systems.
    • Research contributions resulted in publications at NeurIPS and ACM SIGSPATIAL.
  • Graduate Research Assistant & Fellow @ University of Minnesota Sep 2023 – Present
    • Research on efficient data systems with native support for spatiotemporal data and on enabling LLMs to better understand and interact with such data.
    • KAFY: an extensible, scalable transformers-based system for trajectory data analysis (summarization, generation, prediction, imputation, classification).
    • LLMs for Spatial Analysis: presented several tutorials on large language models for spatial analysis queries.
    • POLARIS/iHARP: infrastructure and web-based interfaces for interactive querying and visualization of scientific raster data.
  • Research Engineer & Junior Research Assistant @ American University in Cairo Sep 2019 – Jul 2021
    • Developed an embedded system integrating four subsystems for sustainable agriculture, enabling real-time agricultural data extraction and analysis using Python, NumPy/Pandas, BeautifulSoup, and VBA.
    • Built and evaluated reinforcement learning models for dual-criticality scheduling using OpenAI Gym, RLlib, and TensorFlow.
🏢 Industry
  • Software Engineer Co-op @ Dell Technologies Mar 2022 – Mar 2023
    • Developed production-grade C++ modules for Dell's 5G platform, improving throughput and reliability in latency-sensitive environments.
    • Collaborated with distributed engineering teams across Egypt, India, and Canada on server deployments, CI/CD pipelines, and gRPC-based microservices.
    • Containerized 30+ services using Docker and Podman, reducing deployment time by ~15%.
  • Software Engineer Intern @ Silicon Arena LLC Aug 2021 – Oct 2021
    • Developed front-end modules for an open-source, Agile-based e-commerce platform using React.js and REST APIs.
    • Collaborated with back-end developers to integrate databases with data-driven user interfaces.
🎓 Teaching
  • Graduate Teaching Assistant @ University of Minnesota 2026
    • CSCI 4707: Practice of Database Systems.
  • Graduate Teaching Assistant @ University of Minnesota Feb 2025 – May 2025
    • CSCI 5708: Architecture and Implementation of Database Management Systems.
    • Supported ~50 students through office hours and project guidance, including work involving PostgreSQL.
  • Undergraduate Teaching Assistant @ American University in Cairo Jan 2023 – May 2023
    • CSCE 4301: Embedded Systems Lab.
  • Programming Fundamentals Mentor @ Udacity Sep 2022 – May 2024
    • Mentored 300+ students in Python, data structures, and algorithms.
    • Delivered 900+ hours of mentoring and technical instruction to students ages 12–17, including 200 students in the Digital Egypt Cubs Initiative at a 97% graduation rate.
  • Machine Learning Instructor @ Google Developer Student Club, AUC Aug 2021 – Dec 2021
    • Introduced 40+ students to machine learning concepts, Google BigQuery, and Qwiklabs hands-on exercises.

📰 News

  • Sep 2026Paper Our paper MOSAIC-CONUS: A Multimodal, Multi-Temporally Paired Dataset for Earth Sciences was accepted to NeurIPS 2026 (acceptance rate 25.8%).
  • Aug 2026Award Awarded the Google DeepMind Student Travel Grant to attend ACM SIGSPATIAL OASIS 2026.
  • Aug 2026Challenge ARFA, our agentic system for real-time riverine flood response, was selected as a Top 10 Finalist in the ACM SIGSPATIAL 2026 OASIS Student Challenge.
  • Aug 2026Paper Our demo paper on Aether, an agentic retrieval and reasoning system for multimodal Earth observation data, was accepted to ACM SIGSPATIAL 2026.
  • Aug 2026Internship Wrapped up my research internship with the GeoAI Team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
  • Jun 2026Paper KAFY, our extensible and scalable transformers-based system for trajectory data analysis, was accepted to PVLDB (19(11), 3385–3399), along with a system demonstration.
  • Apr 2026Internship Started as a Research Intern with the GeoAI Team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
  • Jan 2026Paper Our paper "Large Language Models for Spatial Analysis Queries" was accepted to IEEE ICDE 2026, and also to SBBD 2026.
  • Aug 2025Award Awarded the VLDB Travel Award Grant to attend the 52nd International Conference on Very Large Databases.
  • May 2025Paper Two papers at VLDB 2025: "POLARIS: An Interactive and Scalable Data Infrastructure for Polar Science" and our tutorial "Large Language Models for Spatial Queries Analysis."
  • 2023–2024Fellowship Awarded the GAGE Fellowship (Grants to Advance Graduate Education), University of Minnesota.

Contact

📍 4-204B Kenneth H. Keller Hall, University of Minnesota
📧 husse408 [at] umn.edu | youssefhussien [at] aucegypt.edu
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