Yusuf Qwareeq

PhD Candidate in Electrical Engineering, Temple University

Yusuf Qwareeq

I work on seizure onset zone localization from intracranial EEG and on brain MRI in chronic spinal cord injury. I write the desktop applications that run those pipelines. I also develop MR pulse sequences for our Siemens Prisma.

I am based in the Center for Precision Neuroimaging in Neurosurgery at Thomas Jefferson University, where I run the MRI sessions our studies depend on, including task and resting-state fMRI.

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Portrait of Yusuf Qwareeq

01, Focus areas

Research

I analyze interictal SEEG from epilepsy surgery candidates and structural MRI from chronic spinal cord injury studies, and I develop MR pulse sequences for the scanner.

Network and fragility measures are sensitive to preprocessing and to numerical conditioning. I test them across recording states and report which cases the analysis has to exclude.

Most of these pipelines are the work of colleagues, and I wrap them in the desktop applications the lab runs them from. My part is the operator-facing layer: dependency handling, provenance, packaging, and an interface someone can run without me in the room.

Research themes

Seizure onset zone localization
I study interictal SEEG markers of the seizure onset zone, including network fragility, and test whether they survive a change of brain state. In temporal lobectomy candidates, I compare temporal against non-temporal contacts across awake and asleep recordings.
Brain imaging in spinal cord injury
I process multi-modal MRI for chronic spinal cord injury studies, including volumetric morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging, and prepare the structural measures that the group relates to clinical motor and sensory function.
MR sequence development and reconstruction
I write native pulse sequences for the scanner and reconstruct the data offline. The current sequence is a 3D center-out radial UTE aimed at the ultrashort-T2 myelin pool.

02, Selected writing

Publications

A selection. The complete record, including co-authored abstracts, is in my CV.

  1. ASSFN Biennial Meeting · 2026 · Conference abstract

    Regime-gated neural fragility for interictal seizure onset zone localization: guardrails against near-singular inflation

    Yusuf Qwareeq, Michael Kogan, Caio Matias, Michael Sperling, Ashwini Sharan, Chengyuan Wu, Kevin Hines, and Mahdi Alizadeh

    Digital poster, American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery Biennial Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio.

  2. ASSFN Biennial Meeting · 2026 · Conference abstract

    State-robust temporal lobe network phenotype in interictal SEEG across awake and sleep

    Yusuf Qwareeq, Michael Kogan, Caio Matias, Michael Sperling, Ashwini Sharan, Chengyuan Wu, Kevin Hines, and Mahdi Alizadeh

    Printed poster, American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery Biennial Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio.

  3. Movement Disorders · 2026 · Manuscript under review

    Altered static and dynamic brain functional connectivity associated with visual disturbances and hallucinations in Parkinson's disease

    Sara Naghizadehkashani*, Sahar Darabi Monadi*, and fourteen others, including Yusuf Qwareeq

    Submitted March 2026. *These authors contributed equally. The full author list is in my CV.

  4. Cyber-Physical Systems · 2024 · Journal article

    Maximum elastic scheduling of virtual machines in general graph cloud data center networks

    Yusuf Qwareeq, Abdalaziz Sawwan, and Jie Wu

    Volume 10, issue 3, pages 283 to 301. Earlier work in cloud and network scheduling. doi.org/10.1080/23335777.2023.2301106

View all publications

03, Background

Experience

Recent research and engineering roles. The complete record is in my CV.

  1. June 2025 to present

    Graduate Research Assistant

    Center for Precision Neuroimaging in Neurosurgery, Thomas Jefferson University

    • Build the lab's desktop tooling for intracranial electrode localization and for structural MRI processing in spinal cord injury studies.
    • Run MRI sessions on the scanner, including language-task and resting-state fMRI, and train incoming lab members on the protocols.
    • Run electrode reconstruction and resection-contact labeling for a 29-subject SEEG cohort.
    • Write native pulse sequences for the scanner in the Siemens IDEA environment, most recently a 3D center-out radial UTE that is built, simulated, and deployed.
    • Reconstruct non-Cartesian data offline in Python, gridding onto a measured gradient trajectory rather than the nominal one.

  2. August 2022 to present

    Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant

    Temple University

    • Hold a departmental assistantship at Temple University, first in Computer and Information Sciences and, since 2023, in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
    • Built the offline neural decoding pipeline for the Cortimo intracortical brain-computer interface study in the Neural Instrumentation Laboratory, covering epoching, feature extraction, and Kalman and linear decoder evaluation.
    • Coordinated peer review for IEEE Transactions on Services Computing as editorial assistant to an associate editor, inviting reviewers and tracking overdue reports.

  3. August 2021 to July 2022

    Software Developer

    Globitel, Amman, Jordan

    • Designed a real-time monitoring service for audio, video, and screen activity using REST APIs, WebRTC, multithreading, and WebSockets.
    • Implemented cryptographic utilities, including Base32 encoding, cipher libraries, and a licensing framework.

04, Training

Education

  1. August 2022 to present

    PhD, Electrical Engineering

    Temple University

    Advisor: Iyad Obeid. Research conducted in Mahdi Alizadeh's laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University. Alizadeh also serves as an external advisory member of the doctoral committee. Passed the preliminary examination in summer 2025. Dissertation focus: neuroimaging and electrophysiology methods for surgical planning.

  2. May 2025

    MS, Electrical Engineering

    Temple University

    Earned along the way to the PhD on the project track. Master's project: an offline decoding pipeline for two-dimensional center-out reaching data from the Cortimo intracortical brain-computer interface study, built in Iyad Obeid's Neural Instrumentation Laboratory.

  3. September 2021

    BS, Electrical Engineering

    The University of Jordan

    Graduated salutatorian. Senior design: an indoor positioning system combining Wi-Fi signal strength, inertial measurement, and a recurrent neural network.

05, Teaching

Teaching and service

Summer camp direction and teaching assistantships.

  1. 2024 to 2026

    PY-STEM Summer Camp

    College of Engineering, Temple University

    • Counselor and curriculum developer for the PY-STEM middle school summer camp in 2024, co-director in 2025, and director in 2026.
    • Publish the camp materials at campnotebook.org.

  2. 2022 to 2025

    Teaching Assistant

    College of Engineering, Temple University

    • In spring 2025: ENGR 1102, Introduction to Engineering Problem Solving; ECE 2113, Electrical Devices and Systems I Lab; and ECE 3824, Engineering Computation III.
    • Earlier: ECE 3822, Engineering Computation II, in spring 2024, and CIS 2107, Computer Systems and Low-Level Programming, from 2022 to 2023.

06, Capabilities

Methods and skills

Grouped tools and methods.

Neuroimaging
FreeSurfer, SPM, SimpleITK, NiBabel, BIDS.
Methods
Network and graph analysis, functional and structural connectivity, MR sequence design and non-Cartesian reconstruction, statistical inference.
Software
Python, C and C++, MATLAB, TypeScript, Electron, React, SQL, LaTeX, PyTorch, NumPy, SciPy, pandas.
Research practice
Reproducible pipelines, automated testing, Git, Linux, Docker, documentation.