Osama Hanna

Biography

Osama Hanna is a Research Scientist at Meta, AI, and Ph.D. candidate at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCLA. He works with Prof. Christina Fragouli (advisor) and Prof. Lin F. Yang (co-advisor) as a member of ARNI lab, and he closely collaborates with Prof. Suhas Diggavi. Before joining UCLA, he received his Bachelor’s and Masters degrees in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering from Cairo University, and Nile University respectively.

Research Interests

• Bandits and reinforcement learning
• Learning theory
• Information and coding theory
• Algorithms
• Mathematical logic

My research explores the intersection of online learning and information theory. Machine learning techniques guide in devising better algorithms, while information theory sets fundamental barriers for optimal performance. However, things happened to work in reverse for me:) my struggles with machine learning techniques to enhance performance identified the challenging aspects, hence, helped me to establish performance lower bounds, while struggling with information-theoretic lower bounds led to improved algorithms. I enjoy the process of thinking about the mathematical and modeling aspects of these problems, and hope my research will advance interaction between humans and AI, enhancing decision-making in areas such as healthcare, inclusive prosperity, and economic development.

Education

• Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Los Angeles (Advisors: Prof. Christina Fragouli, and Lin F. Yang)
  Although I am with the ECE department you were most likely to find me in Math department halls. Why? I completed 7 ECE courses, but my love affair with Math reached 12 courses.
  Collaborators at UCLA: Christina Fragouli (advisor), Lin F. Yang (co-advisor), and Suhas Diggavi
• M.Sc., Electrical Engineering, Nile University, Egypt
• B.S., Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt

Experience

• Reserach Scientist, Meta AI (2024-current)
• Research Intern, Meta AI (Summer 2022)
• Research Intern, Aalborg University, Denmark (Advisor: Petar Popovski) (Summer 2017)

Publications

Invited Talks

• [April 2024] University of California, Riverside
• [April 2024] Stanford University
• [Feb 2024] University of California, Berkeley
• [Jan 2024] University of Southern California
• [Nov 2023] The Reinforcement Learning Theory Seminar Series
• [Nov 2023] University of California, Irvine
• [Jul 2023] The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• [Jul 2023] City University of Hong Kong
• [Feb 2023] ITA Graduation Day Talk
• [Jan 2022] Spotlight talk at ICML Workshop on Reinforcement Learning Theory

Teaching

• [Fall 2019] Teaching Assistant for Linear Programming (EE236A), University of California, Los Angeles
• [Fall 2021] Teaching Assistant for Graph Theory (EE134), University of California, Los Angeles

Mentoring

• PhD students: Merve Karakas, Xinlin Li
• Undergraduate students: Tara Sadjadpour, Dylan Lee, Yiming Guo, Karim Saraipour, Zixiang Ji, Jianxing
  Zhao

Reviewing

NeurIPS, ICML, ALT, ICLR, AISTATS, ISIT, GLOBECOM,  IEEE JSAIT, IEEE JSAC, IEEE Comm Letters, IEEE TWC, IEEE TC

Selected Courses from ECE Department at UCLA

Reinforcement Learning Theory(A+), Information Theory(A+), Foundations of Statistical Learning(A), Linear Programming(A), Convex Optimization(A), Large Scale Optimization(A)

Selected Courses from Math Department at UCLA

Algorithms(A+), Computability Theory(A+), Mathematical Logic(A+), Axiomatic Set Theory(A), Analysis Honors(A+), Topology(A), Optimization(A+), Model Theory(A), Measure Theory(A), Calculus of Variations(A)