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Overview
Hello! I am a Teaching Faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at Florida State University (FSU). I graduated with my PhD in Mathematics from FSU in Spring 2026. 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 Machine Learning.
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
- Teaching Faculty at Florida State University:
- MAC1114 - Analytic Trigonometry - Fall 2026 (Course Coordinator)
- MAP2302 - Ordinary Differential Equations - Spring 2026 at FSU
- 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
- MAC2311 - Calculus I. - Fall 2021 at FSU
- Lab/Lecture Teaching Assistant:
- MAC1105 - College Algebra - Fall 2025 at FSU
- MAC2233 - Business Calculus - Summer 2025 at FSU
- 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 Deep Learning Bootcamp | Anti-Money Laundering Transaction Detection Project https://github.com/hebabkb/Deep-Learning-for-Anti-Money-Laundering-Detecting-Suspicious-Transactions
September 2025 - December 2025
- Collaborated with a four-person team to develop deep learning models for detecting money-laundering activity in the SAML-D dataset (9.5 million records across 676k accounts, 0.1039% labelled suspicious), mitigating the risk of missing true illicit activities.
- Conducted exploratory data analysis and engineered time based, binary and graph inspired features (e.g., fan in/out ratios, circular transaction counts, currency mismatches) to capture relational and temporal patterns.
- Implemented a chronological training/validation/test split (250/35/35 days) to prevent temporal leakage and maintain class stratification.
- Built a baseline XGBoost classifier and tuned hyperparameters; achieved precision ~ 0.887 and recall ~ 0.413 on the imbalanced dataset.
- Designed a custom Tabular Transformer with dual attention, focal loss and weighted sampling; improved detection with precision ~ 0.6492 and recall ~ 0.5993.
- Developed a recurrent Temporal Graph Neural Network (GRU + GraphSAGE) to model sequences of transaction networks; achieved precision ~ 0.81 and recall ~ 0.81, PR AUC = 0.851 and reduced false negatives to 304, a 45 % improvement in PR AUC and 97% improvement in recall over the baseline.
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
Talks
Honors and Awards
- Tam Teaching Award - April 2026
- 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, April 2025, and April 2026
- 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 - Summer 2026
- 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