From Financial Analyst to AI Researcher as an MS Student
Bishoy Galoaa, MS’25, electrical and computer engineering, is pursuing his passion of making a meaningful impact with artificial intelligence through academic research at Northeastern, machine learning at Massachusetts General Hospital, and now as a PhD student.
Wanting to be a part of the rising artificial intelligence industry, Bishoy Galoaa, MS’25, decided to pursue a master’s degree at Northeastern in electrical and computer engineering with a concentration in machine learning. After graduating with an undergraduate degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the American University in Cairo, Galoaa briefly worked as a financial analyst and co-founded a startup in Egypt. After two years, he was ready to transition back to academia where he saw himself improving people’s lives with machine learning.
“When I saw the co-op program, facilities, and learned about the interdisciplinary research opportunities, I was drawn to Northeastern,” Galoaa says. “It’s not easy to conceptualize what you’ll encounter from abroad, but I really liked the idea of being in a research-focused environment.”
Bishoy Galoaa, MS’25, electrical and computer engineering, received the Outstanding Student Teaching, Service, and Leadership Award (MS) from Northeastern College of Engineering.
Curriculum designed for real-world application
The program structure contributed significantly to his academic and career development. He appreciated Northeastern’s approach to learning. “No one tells you exactly what to do, but rather they guide you. They encourage you to use your creativity and embrace your curiosity while providing direction to make your projects more realistic,” Galoaa says. His professors often presented parts of their research, giving students the opportunity to collaborate and solve problems. Collaborating on professor’s research, both in academia and industry, gave Galoaa an idea of his research preference. He decided to pursue opportunities in academic research at Northeastern.
Finding mentorship in research opportunities
He found an opportunity as a data science research assistant at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business marketing department. While working there, he collaborated with professors across departments and discovered a passion for interdisciplinary research.
“Anyone can say, ‘let’s collaborate, let’s do something,’ and it happens. Departments can work together seamlessly,” Galoaa says.
He often collaborated with Sarah Ostadabbas, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. He reached out to her to inquire about a research assistant position at her lab, Augmented Cognition Laboratory—ACLab.
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Left: Galoaa helped Sarah Ostadabbas develop the online course Machine Learning with Small Data. Right: Galoaa found community and mentorship with his colleagues at the Augmented Cognition Laboratory.
“Professor Sarah saw I was extremely interested in multi-object tracking and opened up a whole research track for me in this area,” Galoaa says. “I don’t think I could get this freedom of trial and error anywhere else.”
Galoaa’s work with Ostadabbas is in tracking; how to track objects in three-dimensional and two-dimensional spaces, and even when the object is not in direct view of the cameras. For example, if someone is walking behind a truck and they completely disappear, computers don’t know how to extrapolate or see behind the truck. They were trying to figure out how to get computers to estimate the hidden person as human and then how to translate that information into an algorithm or an application.
Galoaa presented his paper, “DragonTrack: Transformer-Enhanced Graphical Multi-Person Tracking in Complex Scenarios,” at the WACV 2025 conference.
Galoaa and Ostadabbas’s solution to this challenge is presented in their paper, “More Than Meets the Eye: Enhancing Multi-Object Tracking Even with Prolonged Occlusions,” which was recently published in the International Conference on Machine Learning 2025.
Research co-op at Northeastern and machine learning at Mass General Hospital
He began as an unpaid research assistant, and with the mentorship of Ostadabbas, his position evolved into an eight-month co-op as a computer vision researcher and eventually an avenue for his PhD research.
During his co-op at the ACLab, Galoaa helped develop a cutting-edge tracking system for toddlers that can identify posture, movement patterns, and symmetry of poses to analyze toddlers’ and infants’ behavior, which can be used for early autism detection. The procedures for identifying autism are designed for adults, and they wanted to develop an algorithm that would non-invasively detect autism in infants and toddlers. Their end-to-end tracking system is unique because it’s noninvasive, meaning they don’t use sensors or trackers physically on children.
“We’re trying to transcend human vision and make it easier for parents to track their toddlers from different locations, even when they’re partially hidden from view,” Galoaa explains
Galoaa presented the paper “A Novel Artificial Intelligence Model for Optimizing Treatment of Salivary Gland Malignancies” at the AAO-HNSF 2024 Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO. Galoaa won the best oral presentation award for the Mass General Hospital research team.
His work with the lab led to them creating an app available to the public on multiple toddler tracking called AiWover. This work caught the attention of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital. This recognition resulted in a part-time machine learning position in the hospital’s orthopedic oncology department. The research he conducted during his internship was published in JS&JB Reviews. He will continue to work for them part-time until he begins his PhD in Fall 2025.
Vision for the future
Now pursuing his PhD at Northeastern and continuing his research with the ACLab, his thesis, “Multi-Object Tracking in Complex Scenes: Extending Human Perception,” was published on ProQuest. His ambitions extend beyond academic publications. “I want my PhD dissertation to leave an impact,” Galoaa says. “It’s not about the number of publications or how fast you complete them, but about working on something meaningful.” He values Ostadabbas lab’s focus on “forgotten or neglected problems” like tracking toddlers for health and safety.
For his future, he wants to work on projects he knows will leave an impact, wherever that may be. “Northeastern provides an environment focused on your success that gives you the space to explore your curiosities,” he says. “It makes what might seem like impossible dreams into real opportunities.”