CV

Omar Alsaqa's Curriculum Vitae.

Contact Information

Name Omar Alsaqa
Professional Title Machine Learning Engineer | Research Scientist
Email o.alsaqa@gmail.com
Phone +1 416-399-0632
Location Waterloo, Ontario

Professional Summary

Research-driven Machine Learning Engineer with 4+ years of experience across industry and academia, specializing in Computer Vision, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), and Generative AI. Proven track record of developing production-grade AI pipelines (MLOps) and publishing at top-tier venues including NeurIPS workshops and IEEE conferences.

Experience

  • 2026 - 2026

    Toronto, Canada

    Research Assistant
    Toronto Metropolitan University (Mitacs Accelerate Internship, with FenderAI)
    • Supervisor: Dr. Rasha Kashef.
    • Department of Electrical, Computer, & Biomedical Engineering.
    • Developed an optimized OCR system for an automated verification pipeline, with more than 3x speedup.
  • 2023 - 2025

    Remote

    Machine Learning Engineer
    LightRing
    • Developed a Highway vehicle speed estimation and road analysis system (83% accuracy in real-time).
    • Automated the FTTH Design Process using GNNs with Setics Sttar, reducing manual design time by 70% (delivered as Windows App).
    • Engineered a Multi-Agent assistant bot for the World Bank using LangGraph and Gemini API; implemented intelligent agent routing.
    • Fine-tuned Whisper for Saudi dialect speech recognition, improving WER by 3%.
  • 2022 - 2024

    Remote

    Research Fellow
    Fatima Fellowship
    • Developed BLISS (Bandit Sampling) for GNNs using DGL, improving training speed up to 15% and accuracy up to 18%.
    • Work accepted at the MusIML workshop at NeurIPS 2025.
  • 2021 - 2024

    Egypt

    Data Scientist
    Orange Innovation Egypt
    • Built MLOps Pipelines using MLflow, DVC, and Docker with real-time monitoring via Prometheus and Grafana.
    • Automated ticket routing for France Business Operations (76% accuracy), reducing latency by 60%.
    • Researched transformer-based Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) with 3D shape prediction.
    • Deployed computer vision systems for plant disease detection and industrial OCR tracking (dot-matrix font).
  • 2020 - 2020

    Egypt

    Computer Vision Intern
    Intixel
    • Architected a segmentation system for breast cancer micro-calcification using U-Net and GANs on DDSM-CBIS dataset.
  • 2019 - 2020

    Egypt

    Deep Learning Intern
    Valeo
    • Developed a car command system and monitoring system for driver distraction.
    • 2nd Place winner of the 2020 Dell Technologies Envision the Future Competition.

Education

  • 2024 - 2026

    Waterloo, Canada

    Master's (Thesis based)
    Wilfrid Laurier University
    Applied Computing
    • Thesis: Developed a novel optimized hierarchical Graph Neural Network for vision tasks, by designing a pure GNN layer that emulates depthwise separable convolutions.
    • Supervisor: Prof. Emad A. Mohammed.
    • Relevant Coursework: Advanced Parallel Programming (CP631), Advanced Machine Learning (CP640), Practical Algorithm Design (CP600), Applied Cryptography (CP614).
    • Teaching Assistantships: Artificial Intelligence (CP468), Data Structures (CP264).
  • 2015 - 2020

    Mansoura, Egypt

    Bachelor's
    Mansoura University
    Computer and Systems Engineering

Publications

  • GeoViG: Geometry-Aware Graph Reasoning for Mobile Vision Tasks in Natural and Medical Images

    Accepted, IEEE EMBC 2026.

  • BLISS, Bandit Layer Importance Sampling Strategy for Efficient Training of Graph Neural Networks

    NeurIPS 2025, MusIML Workshop.

  • Multimodal System for Driver Distraction Detection and Elimination

    IEEE Access, 2022.

Honors and Awards

  • 2026
    Award for Outstanding Work at the Graduate Level
    Wilfrid Laurier University

    Selected to receive the award at the Spring 2026 convocation ceremony.

Projects

Skills

Languages: Python, C++, C, CUDA, SQL
Frameworks: PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangGraph, Jina AI, Scikit-learn, OpenCV, HuggingFace, DGL, PyG
Tools: Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Git, MLflow, DVC, W&B, Prometheus, Grafana

Certificates

  • Deep Learning Specialization - Coursera
  • Machine Learning with Graphs (CS224W) - Stanford
  • NLP with Deep Learning (CS224n) - Stanford
  • Computer Vision (CS231n) - Stanford

Languages

Arabic : Native
English : Professional Working Proficiency (CELPIP General Average: 9, May 2026)

Volunteering Experience

IEEE Egypt Section (2017 - 2020): ESBC, EED (Egyptian Engineering Day) and IEEEXtreme Volunteer.
IEEE Mansoura Student Branch (2017 - 2020): Multimedia Head, Project Manager (Career Insider 5.0), and Volunteer (FR, PR, HR).
CAT Reloaded (2017 - 2019): Machine Learning and Graphic circle member.
COP in MyCity Mansoura (2019 - 2020): Delegate.
HULT PRIZE Mansoura (2019 - 2020): Partnership Development member.