Mohannad Elhamod

Mohannad Elhamod is holding a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech (VT). He is a member of the Science-Guided Machine Learning group, under the guidance of Professor Anuj Karpatne. Prior to this, he earned an M.Eng degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from McGill University, where he worked under the supervision of Professor Martin D. Levine. He also obtained a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology. He boasts over six years of industry experience as a software engineer at Microsoft.

His research spans various interdisciplinary areas, particularly at the convergence of machine learning and scientific discovery across fields like physics and biology. He focuses on bridging the divide between machine learning techniques and human expertise, ensuring that machine learning models align with established expert knowledge. This effort is crucial in integrating machine learning into the fabric of science and society. He also has a keen interest in machine learning visualization and explainability, advocating for models that are transparent in their decision-making processes to reduce social biases and gain the trust of scientists and experts.

Maintaining meaningful relationships with his teachers and mentors has always been important to him. He has actively sought teaching opportunities, serving as a teaching assistant for multiple graduate and undergraduate courses and even taking on the role of the instructor for a senior undergraduate capstone class. His teaching philosophy revolves around intellectually engaging with students and inspiring their curiosity.

In his leisure time, he contributes to the community by serving as a board member of the Computer Science Graduate Council and hosting discussions about the challenges faced by graduate students. He also indulges in stand-up comedy and captures the beauty of people and places with his camera.

Education

• Virginia Tech - Doctor of Philosophy - Ph.D. Computer Science Aug 2019 - May 2023
• McGill University - Master of Engineering (M.Eng.), Computer Engineering Jan 2010 - Apr 2012
• Jordan University of Science and Technology - Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Engineering 2002 - 2007

Selected Publications

• Elhamod, M., Khurana, M., Manogaran, H., Uyeda, J., Balk, M., Dahdul, W., Bakis, Y., Bart, H., Mabee, P., Lapp, H., Balhoff, J., Charpentier, C., Carlyn, D., Chao, W., Stewart, C., Rubenstein, D., Berger-Wolf, T., Karpatne, A. (2023). "Discovering Novel Biological Traits From Images Using Phylogeny-Guided Neural Networks", Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
• Elhamod, M., Bu, J., Singh, C., Redell, M., Ghosh, A., Podolskiy, V., Lee, W., Karpatne, A. (2022). "CoPhy -PGNN: Learning Physics-guided Neural Networks with Competing Loss Functions for Solving Eigenvalue Problems", ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 13 (6), 1-23
• Elhamod, M., Diamond, K., Maga, A., Bakis, Y., Bart, H., Mabee, P., Dahdul, W., Leipzig, J., Greenberg, J., Avants, B., Karpatne, A. (2022). "Hierarchy-guided neural network for species classification", Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13 (3), 642-652
• Elhamod, M., Levine, M. (2013). "Automated Real-Time Detection of Potentially Suspicious Behavior in Public Transport Areas", IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 14 (2), 688-699
• Elhamod, M., Levine, M. (2012). "Real-Time Semantics-Based Detection of Suspicious Activities in Public Spaces", 2012 Ninth Conference on Computer and Robot Vision