Basel is a Ph.D. candidate at USC and a research assistant at USC’s Information Sciences Institute where Prof. Craig Knoblock advises him. Before joining USC, Basel worked for Apple (2018) as an Embedded Software Engineer in the Flash Storage Software Department and for Mellanox Technologies (2011-2017) - acquired by Nvidia - as a Senior Firmware Engineer and Team Leader in the Switch Silicon Core Department. Basel received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University in 2015, specializing in Computer Science, Communications, and Electronic Devices. Basel identifies as a multidisciplinary maker - a scientist, artist, and engineer. He was recently featured in LA’s Most Inspiring Stories column at the Voyage LA magazine (link). Besides his research and academic work, Basel practices plastic and visual arts, his art spans across different mediums, including: hand drawing, painting, and AI-driven artworks.

Basel's research focuses on techniques for describing, acquiring, and exploiting data semantics and combining all of these techniques to build knowledge graphs, as a means to solve complex information integration problems. At ISI's Center on Knowledge Graphs, Basel is currently partaking in the Linked Maps project. His past projects include Model Integration (MINT), Table Understanding and the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge 4. To learn more about Basel's research activities, please visit his website.

University Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (Highest Achievement), 2022, USC
Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge 4 Semifinalist - USC team (valued $250k), 2021, Amazon
MWS Graduate Student Grant (valued $1.6k), 2019, Ford Foundation
Faculty Dean’s List of Outstanding Undergraduate Students, 2013, Tel Aviv University
Freescale Semiconductor Israel Excellence Scholarship (valued $1.2k), 2013, Tel Aviv University