Basel Shbita received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in May 2024, and he was supervised by Craig Knoblock. He grew up in a small Palestinian community, earning his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He worked at Mellanox Technologies, a supplier of computer networking products that was eventually acquired by NVIDIA. After that, he worked on storage devices on Apple’s iPhone and MacBook until he moved to LA to come to USC.

Why did you choose a computer science field?

Computers have been my best friend since I was 10. Google didn’t exist back then, so I was curious about source code, HTML and how it was executed on the server. After being promoted to a senior engineering position at Mellanox, I was exposed to more web protocols as my work was about designing network devices. I became intrigued by the concept of knowledge graphs and data science over the web. ISI was one of the first organizations that pushed the DNS (domain name system) web protocol, so I decided to apply to ISI. 

What ISI values resonate with you?

ISI values cross-team and multidisciplinary collaboration. Apart from my research interests, I also love artificial intelligence in my day-to-day life, and I make many different forms of art. You can find my work on Instagram @_baselart. I have always been interested in marrying different domains together, and ISI has helped me do this within my projects.

What were you primary research focuses?

My focus has been knowledge graphs which represent data in a semantic net- work where things have meaning. In my first year I was involved in the MINT project, build- ing prediction systems for hydrology systems in South Sudan and Ethiopia, and scientifically representing them with knowledge graphs. I also competed in Amazon’s Alexa Prize 2021, by building a knowledge graph and populating it with data from Reddit to fuel the Alexa bot. I moved on to geodata integration in the LinkedMaps project, where I tried to find a way to represent historical scanned map data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). It’s great to have had a chance to work with so many different groups and apply my love for knowledge integration. 

What\'s the most impactful project you worked on? 

In my latest project, I analyzed geodata in maps to infer where critical minerals are and assess them for the USGS. There’s a surge in demand for minerals such as copper, zinc, and nickel, which the world needs for developing green energy sources. Using a normal database to log these minerals took too long to show results, so we proposed using knowledge graphs which were more efficient. It was exciting to learn about multidimensional types of map data, as we weren’t restricted to topographic data – we also geologically scanned layers of rocks. 

What's one of your favorite memories from ISI?

I loved our retreat in Lake Arrowhead, which was very refreshing after COVID-19 as it was the first time I’d met colleagues I was working with in person. The retreat filled the intermediate social bridges we really needed. 

What are your plans after ISI?

I’m starting a job at IBM Research in San Jose. Two years ago, I published a paper with IBM on business data while interning with them. I used knowledge graphs to recommend business offerings to customers, and I’m heading back to that group. From the perspective of a scientist, working with real world data and industrial problems is very interesting. I would also like to work with ISI again. During my time at USC, I received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant award. This reaffirmed my love for teaching, and I might steer back into academia to teach at ISI in the future.