Abdallah Alsammani

Research Group

A small group in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Delaware State University developing mathematical models and data driven methods for problems in public health, biomedicine, and neuroscience, and training students to do the same.

Portrait of Abdallah Alsammani

Abdallah Alsammani, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator · Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Data Science

I completed my Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Auburn University in 2020, then held postdoctoral positions in Neurosurgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and in Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia. I was Assistant Professor of Data Science at Jacksonville University from 2022 to 2025 before joining Delaware State University. I am a member of the American Epilepsy Society and the American Mathematical Society.

Curriculum vitae

Current students

  • Jing Li

    Ph.D. Student

  • Uchenna J. Okorie

    Ph.D. Student

  • Fiona A. Ochieng

    M.S. Student

Current projects

Directions the group is pursuing now. Each is a place where a new student can contribute.

  1. Hybrid epidemic forecasting

    Compartmental models combined with learned transmission terms, with identifiability checked symbolically before fitting and forecasts evaluated on withheld data with calibration diagnostics.

  2. Identifiability and optimization for hybrid models

    Conditions under which a mechanistic model augmented with a neural component remains structurally identifiable, and training procedures with stability guarantees that enforce them. Related: identifiability tutorial.

  3. Trustworthy clinical prediction

    Calibration, uncertainty quantification, and interpretability for clinical models, from ICU outcomes to multimodal electronic health record data, with calibration assessed across patient subgroups.

  4. Automated HFO detection in long term intracranial EEG

    Deep learning detectors for pathological high frequency oscillations that account for vigilance state and recording duration, building on the group's clinical collaborations. Related: Neurology, 2026.

Joining the group

I welcome students with backgrounds in mathematics, statistics, computer science, or related quantitative fields. Prior training in biology or medicine is not required; comfort with calculus, linear algebra, and probability is expected, and programming experience in Python, R, Julia, or MATLAB is valuable.

  1. Read one paper.Skim the research overview and choose a publication close to your interests.
  2. Send a short introduction.Your background, the problems you find interesting, your programming experience, and a CV or transcript. A specific question about a paper is welcome.
  3. Apply.Graduate applicants apply through the Delaware State University graduate program in Mathematical Sciences. Current undergraduates can begin with a semester project or a summer program such as Delaware INBRE.
Email Dr. Alsammani

Former research mentees

Selected undergraduate and graduate research mentorship at Delaware State University and Jacksonville University. Several projects have resulted in peer reviewed publications and research preprints.

Delaware State University

StudentResearch project / scholarly outcomeTerm
Merasia M. JohnsonBiomedical machine learning for ICU mortality prediction; co-author, Calibrated and Interpretable Machine Learning for ICU Mortality Prediction Using First 24-Hour Clinical Data (medRxiv preprint, 2026).Spring 2026

Jacksonville University

StudentResearch project / scholarly outcomeTerm
Sarah GoodyearIndependent research on statistical learning methods and an industry data analytics internship; co-author, Predicting Sleep Disorders Using Machine Learning: A Comparative Analysis (ICCSA 2025).Fall 2024 – Spring 2025
Holly GallupData analysis and visualization for animal shelter outcomes.Spring 2025
Ann UbakaConstruction work zone crash analysis and safety modeling; co-author, Construction Work Zone Safety: Identifying Critical Crash Factors and Patterns in Florida (Construction Research Congress 2026).Fall 2024 – Spring 2025
Sarah WehrungRoad accident data analytics and visualization.Fall 2023
Rhea WhiteIntroduction to data science and prediction algorithms in R.Fall 2023
Cody ThomasNFL game prediction modeling using singular value decomposition.Spring 2023

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