PhD Researcher · Explainable AI · Ontology-Guided Systems · LLM Evaluation
I build AI systems that reason transparently — and evaluate them with the same rigor.
I'm a third-year PhD student at NC State University, working at the intersection of explainable AI, ontology-guided recommendation, and neurosymbolic reasoning. A core thread in my research: defining what a trustworthy AI output looks like — not just statistically plausible, but logically consistent, edge-case-tested, and grounded in domain knowledge.
OSCAR — Ontology-Guided Contrastive Learning for Career-Job Matching
Designing quality benchmarks and evaluation frameworks for a contrastive learning system grounded in the ESCO occupational ontology. Targeting RecSys.
SDPO — State-Tracked Beam Search with Dominance Pruning for Career Path Recommendation
Authoring golden-standard evaluation sequences and analysing model reasoning chains for logical consistency and ontology alignment across 40,000+ career sequences.
| Area | Tools & Frameworks |
|---|---|
| AI / ML | PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, HuggingFace |
| Ontology & Knowledge Graphs | ESCO, graph traversal, neurosymbolic AI |
| LLM Evaluation | Prompt engineering, benchmark design, RLHF/RLAIF pipelines |
| Cloud & Engineering | AWS (Lambda, Kinesis, CloudTrail), Python, Bash, REST APIs |
| Security & Governance | SIEM (Gurucul, Blumira), OWASP OdTM, NIST 800-53, SOC 2 |
| Dev Tools | Git, Docker, Linux HPC, SQL |
Cybersecurity Analyst · CyberAlliance LLC, Raleigh, NC (Oct 2024 – Present)
- SIEM operations and threat detection across Gurucul, Blumira, Reco Security, and M365 Defender
- Built a ChatGPT Enterprise audit log pipeline into Blumira SIEM via AWS Lambda and Kinesis
- Designed a Threat Ontology grounded in OWASP OdTM for the Sally AI platform; mapped to NIST 800-53 and SOC 2
- Endpoint security (CrowdStrike Falcon EDR, MDE), vulnerability management (Rapid7 InsightVM), and compliance gap analysis
Graduate Research Assistant · NC State University (Aug 2023 – Present)
- Designing evaluation benchmarks and quality criteria for ontology-guided AI recommendation systems
- Ran a 360-participant human study evaluating AI explanation quality
- Built neurosymbolic AI pipelines integrating ESCO ontology via graph traversal
- Processed 93 GB of structured research data on Linux HPC (Python, PyTorch, scikit-learn)
Lecturer II & Head of Computer Science · Kabba College, ABU Zaria (Dec 2018 – Present)
- Teaching, research supervision, and academic leadership in the CS programme
- Head of CS Programme since 2021; former Head of ICT Unit (2021–2023)
Machine Learning Engineer Intern · Interglobal Limited, Abuja (Jan 2018 – Jul 2018)
- Built and maintained ML pipelines (TensorFlow, PyTorch) on large REST API and web-scraped datasets
- Tuned regression models and neural networks, reducing model error by 15%
- Ph.D., Computer Science · NC State University, Raleigh (Expected May 2028) Advisor: Prof. Kemafor Ogan | Research: Explainable AI, Neurosymbolic AI, Ontology-Guided Recommendation
- M.Sc., Computer Science · African University of Science & Technology, Abuja (December 2017)
- B.Sc., Computer Science · Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (December 2012)
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Mansouri, S., Mohammed, H., & Anyanwu, K. (2024). Taming Smart Contracts With Blockchain Transaction Primitives. IEEE International Conference on Blockchain. DOI: 10.1109/Blockchain62396.2024.00085
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Mohammed, H. et al. (2022). A Recommender System for the Nigerian Fashion Industry Based on Big Data. AFIT 1st Faculty of Science International Conference, pp. 78–84.
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Lawan, F. I., Ismaila, L. E., Adeshina, S. A., Mohammed, H. I., & Csato, L. (2019). Deep Learning Methods for Filter Extraction in Tomato Fruits. 15th International Conference on Electronics, Computer and Computation (ICECCO). DOI: 10.1109/ICECCO48375.2019.9043283
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Mohammed, H. et al. (2019). An Intelligent Predictive Model for Electricity Consumption in Institutional Buildings Using Artificial Neural Networks. International Journal of Computer Science and Technology, IJCST, Vol. 10, Issue 3.
- Peer Reviewer — ICCAIT 2025, International Conference on Computing & Applied Informatics Technology
- African Development Bank Scholarship Award — Master's Programme (2016–2017)
Co-Founder · <CODELAB> (Jan 2021 – Present) A non-profit teaching programming and digital literacy to children in Nigeria.
📌 Portfolio · 💼 LinkedIn · 📬 himohamm@ncsu.edu