Qasem Al-Tashi

Career

Experience

  1. Data Scientist / AI Research Engineer

    Mar 2024 – Present

    National Oilwell Varco (NOV Inc.) · Houston, TX

    • Leading development of an AI-powered computer vision system for Current Transformer (CT) verification using dual-camera architecture, OCR, and classical ML classifiers — achieving 100% accuracy with no GPU required.
    • Architected and deployed a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Sales Order Chatbot integrating AWS Bedrock LLMs, Athena SQL generation, and Kendra knowledge retrieval.
    • Built MaintGPT, an AI maintenance assistant combining LLM reasoning, audio diagnostics (YAMNet), speech-to-text (Whisper), and vector similarity search for industrial troubleshooting.
    • Automated SQL generation with LLMs, cutting manual query handling time by 80% and improving structured query accuracy by 40%.
  2. Research Scientist / Investigator

    Nov 2022 – Feb 2024

    Dept. of Imaging Physics, MD Anderson Cancer Center · Houston, TX

    • Developed SwarmDeepSurv, integrating swarm intelligence with deep survival networks for prognostic radiomics signatures across four solid cancers (Patterns, Cell Press).
    • Designed ML models for subgroup identification and treatment effect estimation in NSCLC patients receiving immunotherapy (Nature Communications, 2025).
    • Integrated multi-modal datasets (radiology, pathology, genomics, EHR) for personalized cancer treatment predictions using SHAP/LIME-based explainability.
    • Contributed to NIH grant proposals on AI-driven biomarker discovery and mentored graduate researchers.
  3. Postdoctoral Fellow

    Nov 2021 – Oct 2022

    Dept. of Imaging Physics, MD Anderson Cancer Center · Houston, TX

    • Developed computational approaches for cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prevention using AI.
    • Applied swarm intelligence and deep learning for imaging biomarker discovery and survival prediction.
    • Assisted with NIH and NSF proposal development.
  4. Research Scientist

    Mar 2021 – Oct 2021

    Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS · Malaysia

    • Led AI research for oil & gas applications, including predictive analytics on pipeline weldment radiography.
    • Developed AI-driven defect detection and classification for radiographic imaging.
  5. Graduate Research Assistant

    Jul 2017 – Feb 2021

    Center for Research in Data Science (CeRDaS), UTP · Malaysia

    • Researched multi-objective metaheuristic optimization for feature selection in classification problems.
    • Developed hybrid swarm intelligence algorithms (Grey Wolf Optimizer, Particle Swarm Optimization) for high-dimensional data.
    • Published 10+ peer-reviewed papers during doctoral studies.
  6. Lecturer of Computer Science

    Dec 2012 – Aug 2014

    Albaydha University · Yemen

    • Taught Introduction to CS, C++, Java, Software Requirements, and Networking.
    • Supervised final year projects and served as course coordinator.