AUC Professor Moustafa Youssef First and Only ACM Fellow in the Middle East and Africa

Moustafa Youssef, professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The American University in Cairo (AUC), was recognized as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) during the Virtual Award Ceremony held last month for his contributions to location tracking algorithms. According to ACM, this “most prestigious member grade recognizes the top 1% of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community.” Youssef, the first and only ACM fellow in the Middle East and Africa, said: "it is an honor and a responsibility to be named an ACM fellow. I feel the responsibility to remain on track, especially with how rare it is to be recognized in our region by the association. I share with my research team the responsibility of keeping the bar high and continuing our achievements and recognition worldwide."

Mobile wireless sensor networks, mobile computing, location determination technologies, pervasive computing, and network security are on top of Youssef's research interests. "We are using mobile devices to provide innovative services for people based on the outcome of our research. One of our main areas of expertise in this domain is location tracking, which has many outdoor and indoor applications.” Such applications include indoor/outdoor navigation, asset tracking, directed ads, indoor analytics, emergency services (automatically finding the location of the person calling the emergency service from their cell phones) and contact tracing for COVID- 19 exposure.

Youssef's research examines the limitations of GPS tracking in indoor and outdoor localization. "For example, GPS doesn't work efficiently in urban canyons, within buildings and inside tunnels where the signals are blocked. Also, using GPS services drains mobile phones batteries." Youssef and his team work on providing different technologies for indoor localization with no GPS reach and outdoor localization, "providing better accuracy and consuming only one-tenth of the mobile phone energy consumed by the GPS." Their Dejavu technology, which provides an accurate energy-efficient outdoor localization system, won the Best Paper Award in the prestigious 2013 ACM SIGSpatial Conference.

Youssef’s earliest research focused around leveraging WiFi signals to provide indoor localization as a value-added service to WiFi networks. This research led to the design and implementation of the Horus WiFi-based location determination system, for which he won the University of Maryland Invention of the Year award in 2003.

He continued to explore innovative means to address indoor localization. Along with his research team, he introduced CrowdInside system, which uses smartphone sensors to construct indoor floor plans in a building automatically.

Recognized among the top researchers of location tracking systems and technologies by different industry players, they have been funded by Microsoft research, Intel research, Uber research and have received multiple Google Research Awards. "Several big companies have licensed our research. In addition, startup companies use our technologies as their differentiator in Egypt, the Gulf and the U.S."

Youssef's passion for computing dates back to his early childhood years. In 4th grade, his father gifted him his first computer, and by 6th grade, he created his first computer game, sold it to the computer company and received his first award: three new computer games. Youssef was ranked third nationwide in the General Secondary School Certificate exam and chose to study computer and systems engineering at Alexandria University instead of pursuing medical studies. After receiving his Master of Science degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Alexandria University, he traveled to the U.S. to complete his PhD at the University of Maryland.

After returning to Egypt in 2007, Youssef established the Wireless Research Center of Excellence. Since then, the center has acquired millions of dollars in research funds from local, regional, and international funding agencies.

He later was the recipient of the 2010 TWAS-AAS-Microsoft Award for Young Scientists, the 2013 and 2014 COMESA Innovation Award, the 2017 Egyptian State Excellence Award, multiple Google Research Awards, among many others.

In 2019, Youssef was named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to wireless location tracking technologies.

Youssef has also been named in the 2021 Stanford University-Elsevier list of the top 2% most-cited scientists in various disciplines worldwide.

Since 2015, he has been appointed as a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan and he has also been a regular Visiting Researcher at Google since 2016.

Looking to the future, Youssef explains that they are now exploring "the next big thing." They are currently working on combining quantum computing with location tracking. As this area of research grows worldwide, he hopes to see it grow in Egypt as well. When it comes to his students, Youssef believes his recognition wouldn't have been possible without their hard work, which he supervises. "I wish more students from the region become ACM fellows in the future and continue to impact the world with their achievements."

During summer, Youssef worked with two AUC student groups to prepare for the Undergraduate Research Competition in the ACM SIGSpatial International Conference held virtually by China this year. In the undergraduate track students, Israa Fahmy and Samah Hamdy won second place while Joseph Boulis and Mohamed Hemdan won third place.