His research is situated within the Centre for ICT for Development (ICT4D) and the Digital Libraries Laboratory. Hussein's main research interests are in digital libraries, ICT4D, information retrieval, cultural heritage preservation, Internet technology, high performance computing and computer science education. He has in the past worked extensively on architecture and interoperability issues related to digital library systems, with a growing emphasis on the relationship between low resource conditions and such architectures. This has evolved into a focus on ICT for development (ICT4D); this is a new research area in computer science that looks into the application of ICT to solve key developmental problems, as defined locally or by multinational agencies like the United Nations.