CV

Education

• PhD in Computer Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, U.S, August 2016 – August 2021 Ph.D. Dissertation: Crowdsourcing and Semi-Supervised Learning for Detection and Prediction of Hospital-Acquired Pressure Ulcer Advisor: Dr. Joyce Ho, Co-Advisor: Dr. Li Xiong

• Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science, Telecommunication Engineering

  University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran August 2011-July 2015 Thesis Title: Computational Models of human vision, Advisor: Dr Reshad Hosseini

Research Objective

Conducting healthcare informatics research deployable in the real world to ensure maximal benefit for a broader population in society, especially for reducing social and healthcare disparities across minority groups. Deepening my grasp of theoretical machine learning while exploring practical considerations and nuances of turning research into public policy.

Research Interests

Probabilistic Graphical Models, Noisy Labelling, Crowdsourcing, Weakly Supervised Learning, Healthcare Informatics- Nursing quality metrics, Outcome prediction in clinical settings, Tensor Factorization, Disease Progression Prediction, Machine Learning for real-world data, Data Mining for social good, Bias and fairness in machine learning.

Work experience

• Senior Data Scientist, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Ottawa, ON, June 2023 - Present

  Manage the smooth transition from SAS to Python by handling ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) operations, ensuring a seamless flow of data through extraction, transformation, and loading processes.

• Postdoctoral Fellow at School of Public Health, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, September 2021 – June 2023

  Modeling potential threats and incidence rate of infectious diseases using multiple data Sources.

• Research Assistant at Practical Data Mining & Exploration Lab Emory University, Atlanta, GA May 2018 – August 2021

  Tensor factorization for phenotyping in medical datasets to develop high-quality features for various prediction tasks Predicting length of stay of ICU patients using Graphical Models and raw Electronic Health Records data, Nursing quality metrics modeling.

• Fellow, Data Science for Social Good Foundation, Imperial College Business School, London June 2019-August 2019

  Helping Emergency Medical Services to identify High Utilizers for Proactive Care Services using call log data by developing a complete pipeline for applying classification on EHR data with multiple user-defined parameters.

• Teaching Assistant for CS170 Emory University, Atlanta, GA September 2016– May 2018

  Largest intro to CS course at Emory, Introduction to Programming using Java (2 times)

Programming and Technical Skills

• Python, MATLAB, C, C++, Java, SQL, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Graphical models, Tensor Factorization, Time series Analysis, Disease Progression Prediction.

Projects

• Helping Emergency Medical Services to identify High Utilizers for Proactive Care Services using call log data Summer 2019
• Devised SVM regression and neural networks model for prediction of survival time of brain cancer patients, with high accuracy Fall 2016
• Implemented a question answering unit, capable of answering factual queries related to cities using Wikipedia data Fall 2016
• Implemented a user simulation method used in conjunction with dialogue manager systems to be tested Spring 2017
• Implementing an almost complete SQL parser, with functionalities spanning a standard database system Spring 2017
• Tensor Factorization using constrained clustering to improve Chronic kidney disease classification Summer 2017
• Object tracking using Particle filtering and Kalman Filter for multiple cell movement prediction in 2D and 3D Fall 2017
• Mini-hash based similarity search to cluster similar Parkinson patients using audio featurea Fall 2017

Selected Graduate Courses

• Machine Learning, Data mining, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Algorithms, Natural Language Processing, Digital Image Processing, Distributed Processing, High Performance Computing, Database Systems, Systems Programming, Introduction to Biomedical Informatics

Awards and Honors

• Finalist for Best Student Paper competition at AMIA 2019 Informatics Summit March 2019
• Ranked 3rd in my undergraduate class 2016 July 2015
• Won 3rd place in English Presentation competitions in Tehran high school students July 2012
• Won first place in humor writing competition amongst 500 participants July 2011

Reviewing Experiences

AMIA Annual Symposium and AMIA Informatics Summit 2019-2021

Leadership and Community Engagement

• Volunteering for STEM Education Outreach Spring 2018-Now
• Author for Student magazine Satire columnist Mashhad, Iran August 2000 –May 2007
• Active participation in humor competition Weekly column on a blog Tehran, Iran April 2013 – November 2014