About me

  • 7+ years of experience in cross-functional teams, leading cross-industry projects across diverse machine learning domains.
  • Demonstrated successful leadership and management in multiple projects, achieving notable outcomes.
  • Expertise in building, debugging, and deploying resilient machine learning and deep learning models.
  • Developed scalable data solutions using TensorFlow and PyTorch, prioritizing usability and feasibility.
  • Released several datasets and code repositories, and published papers at prestigious venues such as NeurIPS and ICML.
  • Developed robust data pipelines for automated data ingestion and preprocessing, significantly improving data accessibility and reducing processing times.
  • Collaborated with multidisciplinary teams, effectively communicating complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders and ensuring alignment on project objectives and deliverables.
  • Actively involved in mentoring and supervising junior researchers on best practices for conducting projects, as well as writing and presenting research outcomes.
  • Served as a reviewer for multiple high-impact journals and conferences, providing constructive feedback to enhance the quality of research submissions and ensuring rigorous academic standards.

Expertise

  • Machine learning
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Biotechnology
  • Neural Networks
  • Deep Learning
  • LLMs
  • Computer Vision
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Feature Engineering
  • Big Data Analytics
  • Statistical Processing
  • Data Science
  • Supervised Learning
  • Classification
  • Unsupervised Learning
  • Clustering
  • Graph Convolutional Networks
  • Causal Inference
  • Generative AI
  • Variational Autoencoders
  • 3D Shape Reconstruction

Experience

Research Associate

11/2024 - Current

Vision and Image Processing Lab (VIP)

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

Key Contributions

  • Leading the application of machine learning models for image classification and processing.
  • Developing multimodal datasets for various AI applications.
  • Collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance research quality and outcomes.

Research Fellow

02/2022 - 11/2024

Vision and Image Processing Lab (VIP)

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

Releasing and Benchmarking Multimodal Datasets for ML Applications

  • Collaborated with multiple partners on large-scale multimodal datasets.
  • Led data science projects involving data structures, migration, and governance.
  • Released datasets (>1 million) on research platforms like Zenodo, Kaggle, and Hugging Face.
  • Benchmarked image classification models (ResNet50, Transformers) and achieved over 90% accuracy.
  • Published articles in NeurIPS 2023 and 2024.

For more details, visit: BIOSCAN-1M & BIOSCAN-5M

Image and Video Processing

  • Collaborated with the Microsoft Media Group on video object detection.
  • Authored a paper on enhancing detection performance by ~4% (IEEE 2023).
  • Mentored a research project applying Transformers to super-pixels for efficient salient object detection.

For more details, visit: MoE-VRD & SuperFormer

Causality Research

  • Collaborated with the Department of ECE, University of Waterloo.
  • Mentored a project on generative causal inference, enhancing domain generalization by 8.8%.
  • Published research in ICML 2023.

For more details, visit: Causality

Postdoc

09/2018 - 02/2022

Computer Vision Lab (CVL)

Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Autonomous Driving from Virtual to Real-World

  • Collaborated with WASP and SCANIA on autonomous driving research.
  • Managed projects focusing on road network graph learning and reinforcement learning.
  • Developed, debugged, and executed ML experiments using cloud, parallel computing, and bash environments.
  • Enhanced graph representation learning for unsupervised transductive tasks by 2% and supervised inductive tasks by 10%.
  • Curated and released geospatial data from OpenStreetMap (OSMnx) for 18 Swedish cities.
  • Released two code repositories on Git.
  • Published articles in Pattern Recognition 2021 and ICPR 2021.

For more details, visit: BRL-VBVC & GAIN

Single-Image Reconstruction of 3D Shape, Texture, and Camera Pose

  • Developed and implemented predictive models for self-supervised 3D shape estimation.
  • Improved Mean-IoU by 8% and reduced 3D-Angular-Error of the pose by 5° for the CUB dataset.
  • Released code repository on Git.

For more details, visit: SLOPE-KP

Projects

BIOSCAN-1M

BIOSCAN-1M

About: Introducing, studying, and benchmarking the BIOSCAN-1M Insect dataset.

Keywords: Biotechnology, Data management, Big data analytics, Classification, Transfer Learning.

BIOSCAN-5M

BIOSCAN-5M

About: Introducing, studying, and benchmarking the BIOSCAN-5M multimodal dataset.

Keywords: Biotechnology, Data management, Big data analytics, Statistical processing, Feature engineering.

SuperFormer

SuperFormer

About: A Transformer-based model that leverages superpixels for efficient Salient Object Detection (SOD).

Keywords: Computer vision, Salient object detection, Efficient model, Fine-tuning.

SLOPE_KP

SLOPE-KP

About: An approach to self-supervised learning of object pose estimation by keypoints prediction.

Keywords: Computer vision, 3D shape reconstruction, Pose estimation, 3D rotation.

MoE-VRD

MoE-VRD

About: An approach to video relationship detection using mixture of experts.

Keywords: Computer Vision, Video relationship detection, Mixture of experts.

GAIN

GAIN

About: An approach to graph representation learning.

Keywords: Graph convolutional neural networks, Representation learning, Geospatial data analysis.

Causality

Causality

About: Two approaches to generative and implicit causal representation learning.

Keywords: Causal inference, Generative models, Interventions, Variational autoencoders.

BRL_VBVC

Autonomous Driving

About: An approach to Bayesian Reinforcement Learning of vision-based vehicular control.

Keywords: Autonomous systems, Reinforcement learning, Simulated environment.

Education

Ph.D. in Cognitive Science

03/2014 - 05/2018

Thesis: Action in mind: A neural network approach to action recognition and segmentation.

Lund University Cognitive Science (LUCS)

Lund University, Sweden

M.Sc. in Mechatronics

09/2009 - 02/2012

Thesis: Attention control learning in Decision Space Using State Estimation.

Advanced Process, Automation and Control Research Group (APAC)

K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Iran

B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering

09/2005 - 09/2009

Thesis: Design and implementation of a MIMO controller for a quadruple tank system.

Advanced Process, Automation and Control Research Group (APAC)

K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Iran

Skills

Certificates

Generative AI with Large Language Models

04/2025

Skills: LLMs, GenAI, AWS, Python

Issued by DeepLearning.AI and Amazon Web Services via Coursera.

  • Gain foundational knowledge, practical skills, and a functional understanding of how generative AI works
  • Dive into the latest research on Gen AI to understand how companies are creating value with cutting-edge technology
  • Instruction from expert AWS AI practitioners who actively build and deploy AI in business use-cases today

Public Speaking

Computational Entomology Webinar III: Processing liquid samples

06/2024

About: Computer vision and robotic tools to automatically process insect specimens stored in liquid samples.

Vancouver, Canada

GEO BON Global Conference: Monitoring Biodiversity for Action

10/2023

About: AI for Insect Monitoring.

Montreal, Canada

LiU Game Conference

11/2018

About: Computer games, visualization and digital experiences.

Linköping, Sweden

Selected Publications