Yousif Ali Hussin was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1954. He received a BSc degree in Forestry Sciences from the Mosul University, Iraq in 1976. He received an MSc degree in Forestry (Remote Sensing) from Mosul University in 1979. Worked as the lecturer of remote sensing in the Department of Forestry at Mosul University between 1980 and 1985. Between 1986 and 1990 worked as graduate research assistant at Colorado State University on the Shuttle Imaging Radar-B images Research Project, which was funded by NASA through JPL. In 1990 he received his PhD degree in Forest Sciences (Remote Sensing and GIS) from Colorado State University. Between 1990 and 1991 worked as Research Associate at Colorado State University.

Since June 1991 he is Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor of Remote Sensing and GIS at the Department of Natural Resources of The International Institute of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands. Current research interest is the application of microwave and optical satellite data in monitoring tropical deforestation and forest degradation. More specific research interest: SAR and Optical images application in forest and land cover types; RS/GIS applications to detect, monitor and model deforestation and forest degradation; RS/GIS applications to detect, monitor and model forest fire, RS/GIS applications to mangrove and other coastal forest cover types; Remotely Sensed image classification and image transformation for forest and land cover types mapping; Assessment and modeling sequestrated/emitted carbon from healthy/burnt forest using geo-information.

He has been the deputy of the chair person of IUFRO Group 4.02.08 (Remote sensing technology and Geographic Information Systems). Recently he has been selected as the co-chair for the Forestry group 8.07 at ISPRS. Furthermore, he has organized and Lectured in more than 30 international workshops on radar remote sensing, general remote sensing applications in natural resources, applications of remote sensing and GIS in detecting monitoring and modeling forest fire in several countries such as: Netherlands, Poland, USA, Turkey, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Mongolia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.