Research Team

Ahmed Elsousy

Ahmed is a PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Waterloo. Before that, he received his BSc in 2025 and was an undergraduate research student in the SEAD group at the American University in Cairo. Outside of work, he enjoys racing, soccer, pool, gaming, chess, and weightlifting among other things. He also listens to a lot of music and reads in psychology, history (especially technical history), and classic literature.

Marwan Mekhemer

Marwan graduated from McMaster University with a B.Eng degree in Electrical and Biomedical engineering in 2021. During his undergraduate degree, he completed a 16-month co-op at AMD, working on RTL design for hardware blocks within the graphics core. Following graduation, Marwan returned to AMD where he worked in both RTL and modeling roles, before beginning graduate studies in 2025. His research interests are in the areas of computer architecture and digital hardware design. Outside of work, Marwan enjoys soccer, fencing, and video games.

Balaji Venkatesh

Balaji Venkatesh is a part-time MASc student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo. His research interests include reconfigurable computing and computer networks. He holds a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, specializing in Computer Engineering.

Balaji is also a full-time Software Analyst at Hitachi Rail Canada. There, he develops safety critical software for automated rail projects. Outside of research and work, he enjoys volleyball, model railroading, and tinkering with 3D printers and mechanical keyboards.

Thomas Badros

Thomas is a PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Waterloo. He earned his BSc with the highest honors in Electronics and Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo (AUC) in 2025. His research interests involve AI acceleration, reconfigurable computing architectures, and software-hardware co-design. He was an undergraduate research student at the SEAD group in AUC and his thesis was supervised by the Center of Nanoelectronics and devices (CND) and sponsored by Valeo.

Outside of academics, Thomas enjoys multiple activities including gaming, martial arts, music production, watching series (has a taste for anime), ping pong, and chess. He listens to multiple music genres and mostly likes classical and rock music. He also likes reading and debating philosophy (especially metaphysics).

Kerry Li

Kerry graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours BSc. in Computer Science in 2023. During his undergraduate degree, he completed a 12-month internship at AMD working on RTL Design Verification and returned full-time after graduation. Two years later, he began graduate studies in 2025 at the University of Toronto, and transferred to the University of Waterloo in 2026 to pursue a MASc. Kerry’s research interests are in FPGA CAD algorithms and architecture. In his off time, he enjoys video games and badminton.