My Research Interests

I am interested in anything that has to do with Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. I am specifically interested in Inofrmation Extraction, Graph based Learning for NLP, Graphical Models, and Bayesian Networks.

I first got engaged in research work when I had a summer internship at the Human Language Technologies(HLT) research group in IBM Egypt at summer 2002. Later on, I joined HLT as a staff Research Engineer and I stayed their till August 2007.

IBM HLT group is a research group interested in Machine Learning and NaturalLanguage Processing. The group has a strong correlation with the IKM group at IBMT.J. Watson research center. In IBM HLT group, I participated in several projects concerned with language technologies in general. I worked in several Information Extraction projects including semi-supervised/unsupervised relation extraction from unstructured text, semi-supervised event extraction from unstructured text, semantic word clustering, named entity translation, and relation extraction from biomedical data. From those projects. Some of the projects done in cooperationwith Watson research center participated and won several evaluations.

My M.Sc. Thesis proposed a new method for the induction of Bayesian networks structures from data. I first came across Graphical Models during my work in IBM, yet I did not have the chance to get a deeper and solid understanding of it. The desire for having deeper understanding, and the encouragement from my advisor, Prof. Amir Atiya, were the main motivations behind working in this field for my M.Sc Thesis.