Omar Mohammed

I defended my PhD in November 2019, from the CNRS (France). My work is focused on using machine learning (mostly deep learning) to model, extract and transfer styles/personas (check PhD section). 

I have a MSc degree in Machine Learning and Data Mining in 2016. During the masters studies, I did two internships:

• INRIA Nancy - Grand Est: I worked with Jean-Baptiste Mouret on the topic of expensive multi-objective optimization for robot damage recovery.

• University of Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC), ISIR Lab: I worked with Stephane Doncieux and Nicolas Perrin on the topic of transfer learning, with direct application to robotics.

I had my engineering degree from Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt, specialized in electronics and communications. Highlights of this period are: 

• I got a diploma also in embedded software systems (during the time I was doing my engineering degree)

• I participated in multiple robotic competition (embedded software and hardware, and control parts). In 2010, we won 4th place on Egypt in the universities national competition.

• With my colleagues, we published 2 papers in hardware design and verification.

• With my colleagues, we started a start-up, M-Systems, to provide digital electronics services (design and verification). During its lifetime (a year and half), we deployed two solutions to other companies, while negotiating a third solution to another company.

• I joined SpaceTech program, a collaboration between Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Egyptian National Authority for Remote Sensing & Space Sciences in order to launch Egypt's first CubeSat. Although stopped due to the Egyptian revolution of 2011, I received extensive training on systems engineering and communication systems.

After the engineering school, I worked in Mentor Graphics, Cairo, for a year and half. My work focus on designing verification environment for the digital designs provided by our team. I worked for sometime also in digital design.

In high school (equivalent to Classe préparatoire in France), I was ranked 120 over almost half a million student nation wide in Egypt, specialized in science (mathematics branch).

Since as long as I can remember, I loved everything has to do with engineering and computers. I loved systems, and putting them together to form other systems, and so on.

I did my engineering degree from Alexandria University (Faculty of Engineering) in 2012, specialized in electronics.

I worked then for Mentor Graphics for almost a year and half (in digital design and in validation). During this time, my fascination with machine learning and optimization grew a lot. Two things motivated me to finally go there:

• I stumbled upon two books that really changed my life: "Automate This: How Algorithms Took Over Our Markets, Our Jobs, and the World" and "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence". My whole perspective about the world changed radically after reading these two books.

• I then did the machine learning course of Andrew Ng on Coursera. It was a fascinating experience, and a logical progression of material.

This made me decide to leave my beloved Mentor Graphics, and do a masters degree.

At the beginning, the plan was to make the transition from electronics to machine learning in few years, while slowly introducing them to electronics. This is due to the fact that I didn't have a CS background. So I choose to do a masters in embedded systems (USI university, Lugano, Switzerland), while I continue on the side doing online courses in machine learning, and building my knowledge in CS.

Two months into the masters (March 2014), my friend Ahmad Fouad convinced me that I can do this transition right now, without the need for my very cautious plan. It was the point of no return. I applied for three machine learning programs, and luckily got accepted in two (April 2014), and choose MLDM, to start in September 2014. From April to September, I decided to immediately drop my other masters, and focus 24/7 on online courses, to build and enhance my knowledge in CS and ML.