Hi, I'm Yousif.

I'm an MD-PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 🐏. I am jointly appointed in the UNC-NCSU Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the Translational Integrative Sciences Lab (TISLab). My research centers on applying advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques to ophthalmic diagnostics. I have developed and published methods using electroretinography to identify early and longitudinal markers of retinal dysfunction. I also contribute to the Ocular Clinical Domain Working Group within the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen), helping to refine gene–disease validity curation for ophthalmic disorders. Concurrently, I work as a biocurator for the Mondo Disease Ontology, rectifying mappings of inherited retinal dystrophies with international experts. My long-term goal is to integrate AI pipelines that bridge genotype-driven insights with quantitative clinical imaging and physiological data to enable precision phenotyping. Outside of research, I enjoy strength training, experimenting with new recipes, and riding motorcycles.