Contact

Email: hb20@fsu.edu

Office: MCH413E

Socials

Overview

Hello! I am a fifth year graduate student in the Department of Mathematics at Florida State University (FSU). Before this, I completed a Bachelor's in Mathematics and a Master's in Mathematics at Notre Dame University (NDU) - Lebanon.

My Research interests include Differential/Difference Algebra and Computer Algebra. I am also interested in Data Science and pursuing opportunities in industry

Research

Classifying order 4 linear difference operators over C(x) that are expressible in terms of lower order difference operators.
Giving algorithms for solving fourth order difference equations in terms of second order equations, with applications to OEIS.
Classifying order 3 linear difference operators over C(x) that are expressible in terms of lower order difference operators.
Giving an algorithm for absolute factorization of recurrence operators and improve its efficiency, and an algorithm to solve third order difference equations in terms of second order, similar to existing algorithm for differential equations. Moreover, give applications to OEIS.

Teaching

Instructor of Record:

MAC2312 - Calculus II. - Spring 2025 at FSU
MAC2312 - Calculus II. - Fall 2024 at FSU
MAC2312 - Calculus II. - Summer 2024 at FSU
MAC2311 - Calculus I. - Spring 2024 at FSU
MAC2311 - Calculus I. - Fall 2023 at FSU
MAT105 - Principle of Calculus - Spring 2019 at NDU
MAT111 - Calculus I. - Spring 2019 at NDU
MAT105 - Principle of Calculus - Fall 2018 at NDU
MAT111 - Calculus I. - Fall 2018 at NDU
MAT205 - Business and Economics II - Spring 2018 at NDU
MAT111 - Calculus I. - Spring 2018 at NDU
MAT105 - Principle of Calculus - Fall 2017 at NDU
MAT111 - Calculus I. - Fall 2017 at NDU

Recitation Instructor:

MAC2311 - Calculus I. - Fall 2021 at FSU

Lab/Lecture Teaching Assistant:

MAC1140 - Precalculus - Summer 2022 at FSU
MAC2233 - Business Calculus - Spring 2022 at FSU
MAC1105 - College Algebra - Spring 2022 at FSU
MAC1114 - Analytic Trigonometry - Summer 2021 at FSU
MAC2233 - Business Calculus - Spring 2021 at FSU
MGF1106 - Mathematics for Liberal Arts - Spring 2021 at FSU
MAC2233 - Business Calculus - Fall 2020 at FSU
MGF1106 - Mathematics for Liberal Arts - Fall 2020 at FSU

Projects

Erdős Data Science Bootcamp | Auto Loan Credit Decision Project https://github.com/hebabkb/AutoLoanCreditDecisioningModel

February 2025 - April 2025

Developed credit decisioning models (Logistic Regression, Random Forest, XGBoost, Stacking) to predict auto loan defaults, supporting risk management and loan approval strategies.
Engineered robust preprocessing pipelines: handled missing values, mitigated outliers with RobustScaler, and removed multicollinearity.
Achieved 75% recall on bad loans (defaults) while ensuring fairness across gender and race groups: Equal Opportunity Difference (EOD) below 8% and Disparate Impact (DI) close to 1.0, satisfying fairness thresholds.
Implemented SHAP-based interpretability and fairness evaluation using Equal Opportunity and Disparate Impact metrics to enhance model transparency and trustworthiness.

Erdős Data Science Bootcamp | Fake Image Detection Project https://github.com/hebabkb/FakevsReal

September 2024 - December 2024

Developed a fake image detection pipeline using traditional machine learning methods on the CASIA2 Ground Truth dataset (7,491 real, 5,123 fake images).
Engineered features including Error Level Analysis (ELA), Wavelet Transforms, GLCM, Color Histograms, and Edge Features.
IBuilt two levels of Stacking Classifiers combining Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, and SVC models with a final SVM meta-learner.
Achieved 81% accuracy with 73% precision on fake images after SMOTE rebalancing and dimensionality reduction (Locally Linear Embedding).
Developed and deployed a web application on Hugging Face that detects manipulated or AI-generated images in real-time.
Proposed future enhancements including deep learning integration (CNNs, GANs) and reinforcement learning approaches.

Publications

https://www.math.fsu.edu/~hboukaed/Implementations/

Heba Bou Kaedbey, Mark van Hoeij, and Man Cheung Tsui. 2024. Solving Third Order Linear Difference Equations in Terms of Second Order Equations. In Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (ISSAC '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 457-463. https://doi.org/10.1145/3666000.3669719
Heba Bou Kaedbey, Mark van Hoeij, and Man Cheung Tsui. 2025. Solving Order 3 Difference Equations. Journal of Symbolic Computation (2025). https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1kSOA_H04bNE4X
Heba Bou Kaedbey, and Mark van Hoeij. Algorithms for 2-Solvable Difference Equations. arXiv preprint . https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.13785

Talks

Solving Third Order Linear Difference Equations in Terms of Second Order Equations (Slides, Maple Worksheet 1, Maple Worksheet 2) (ISSAC conference, North Carolina State Univeristy, 07/17/2024)

Honors and Awards

Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award - April 2025
Tam Family Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Research - April 2024
Bettye Anne Busbee Case graduate fellowship and doctoral mentorship recognition - April 2023
Clara Kibler Davis Scholarship in Mathematics - April 2021, April 2023, April 2024 and April 2025
Second place award in Lebanese-American university mathematics tournament - May 2017
Dean's Honor List at Notre Dame University, Lebanon-all undergraduate years

Other

Member of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Fall 2024 - Present
Co-chair of the Mathematics Graduate Student Seminar, Fall 2022 - Fall 2024
Member of the Mathematics Graduate Student Council, Fall 2022 - Fall 2024
President of the Lebanese Student Organization at Florida State University, Spring 2023 - Spring 2025
Co-chair of the Directed Reading Program (DRP), Fall 2023