Yusuf Sermet
Associate Research Professor
Dr. Yusuf Sermet is an Associate Research Professor at the ByWater Institute and the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane University, with a joint appointment as Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at the Tulane School of Medicine. Building upon a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering, he holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa, alongside two master's degrees in both Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering. Dr. Sermet's work focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, cyberinfrastructure, and immersive technologies (AR/VR) to solve complex challenges in environmental resilience, hydroinformatics, healthcare, psychology, and the higher education and research ecosystem. As a National Academy of Sciences Early-Career Fellow, he pioneers place-based digital twins and multimodal conversational AI agents that translate complex geospatial data into interactive, localized simulations for communities, policymakers, and professionals.
Interests: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Web Technologies, Virtual & Augmented Reality (AR/VR), Cyberinfrastructure, GPGPU, Digital Twins, Hydroinformatics, Environmental Resilience, Medical AI Systems.
Contributions:
• Leadership & Mentorship: Supervised 5 postdocs, 3 research specialists, 21 grad students, 10 UG students, and 10 HS students.
• Secured Funding: Secured over $2 million in funding as PI/Co-PI from prestigious sources including NOAA, NSF, USGS, and DOT.
• High-Profile Projects: Served as critical senior personnel in projects with a combined budget exceeding $5 million.
• Awards & Recognitions: Awards & Recognitions: Recognized with over 20 prestigious fellowships and innovation prizes spanning academic, defense, and industry leaders, including awards from Microsoft, Samsung, ESRI, The Weather Channel, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
• Innovation & Development: Designed, developed, deployed, and maintained 20+ operational AI tools and web-based CIs.
• Intellectual Property: Holder of 1 patent and multiple proprietary software and methods.
• Academic Contributions: Authored 60+ academic publications and delivered 90+ presentations at renowned journals and venues.
• Entrepreneurship: Co-founded an AI startup, successfully securing seed funding to accelerate innovation.
• Technical Expertise: Cross-Domain Expertise in Conversational AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Web Technologies.
• Event Organization: Extensive experience in organizing conferences, workshops, hackathons, and other professional events.
• Professional Service: Serve on multiple editorial boards, review grant proposals for federal agencies (e.g., NSF), and act as a peer reviewer for 25+ top-tier scientific journals.
• IT & Systems Administration: Personally manage and administer multiple advanced high-performance GPU server clusters to drive large-scale AI computing and national cyberinfrastructure operations.
