Yusef Hosein (’28)

This summer I worked with NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center on projects at the intersection of artificial intelligence, engineering, and decision support. My primary work focused on an AI-powered document understanding initiative designed to make NASA’s historical engineering knowledge easier to search while preserving the traceability and reliability required for technical decision-making. I helped define the project scope, develop evaluation questions, compare large language model responses across NASA AI platforms, and build a validation framework for assessing the quality, accuracy, and credibility of model-generated answers. I also contributed to the technical setup for integrating historical engineering data into a retrieval-augmented generation workflow.

A major focus of my work was understanding how AI can be used responsibly in high-stakes engineering environments, where answers need to be not only useful but also grounded in reliable evidence. I evaluated model responses and their supporting citations to identify where AI tools performed well and where additional human review was necessary. Beyond my technical work I had the opportunity to learn from NASA leaders across risk management, digital engineering, software verification, and crew health, and to present alongside my mentor to the NESC Review Board. These experiences strengthened my skills in applied AI, technical communication, and engineering decision-making, and deepened my interest in using emerging technologies to solve complex real-world problems.