Education and employment
2012-Present Software Engineer at Google
Working on search quality.
2008-2011 PhD
The University of Manchester,
School of Computer Science,
Text Mining Group
Thesis:
“Finding Conflicting Statements in the Biomedical Literature”
(See list of publications
here.)
- Produced Sharif Linux, a deeply localised Linux distribution (server, desktop, and school editions) based on Fedora core 4, customised for the needs of the Iranian user.
- Managed the localization projects of several open source applications
- Designed and implemented the Encyclopaedia of Iranian Architectural History
- Was selected as the consultant in computer related standards for The Institute of Standards & Industrial Research of Iran (ISIRI). Committee member for the drafting of Iranian national standard for keyboard. Drafted Iran’s vote on OOXML document standard.
- Attended and presented at workshops and conferences, including
- GUADEC 05 - GNOME Users’ And Developers’ European Conference
- FOSS Road 05 - Central Asian Camp on Free Software Migration for NGOs and SMEs
Organised the session: How to have more women in free software
- Asia Source II 07 - Bringing Open Source to NGOs and SMEs
- Second conference on Persian computing
2004-2006 MSc
Tehran,
Amirkabir University,
Computer Science,
artificial intelligence
Distinction, the highest overall GPA amongst all the graduates of the year (18.3/20)
Thesis:
“A model for analysis and automatic generation of Persian weblog text”
1999-2004 BSc
Tehran,
Sharif University of Technology,
Applied Mathematics,
First class.
1992-1999 high school and college
Tehran,
National Organization for the Development of Exceptional Talents.
Skills
Natural language processing technologies & tools
I use text mining techniques to extract information about entities and the relations between them from free text, specifically scientific papers in biomedicine. I have special interest in finding negated context, and detecting contrasts and contradictions. Keywords: text mining, named entity recognition, machine learning, classification, clustering, parsing, medical and biomedical literature mining and information extraction.
GNU/Linux and UNIX
Administrator of a server cluster running Linux used by our research group since 2008. Have extensively used version control systems (svn, cvs, bzr, git), bug tracking systems (bugzilla, OO.o issue tracker, etc.), Linux shell programming and commands, GNU autotools, Apache, MySQL.
Programming
Python: my favourite language at the moment. I use it for all of my day-to-day tasks.
Java: used to be my favourite language before I knew Python. I was first in my class in Java programming, and did so well in that course that the lecturer invited me to join a group of postgraduate demonstrators after I took the course in my second year undergrad. These days I only use Java for teaching or collaborative work.
C, C++: I learnt these languages in high school and during my undergraduate education and developed a few projects just to explore, including a complete object oriented game of brick-breaker for a C++ course project in 2000.
MySQL, PHP, HTML: I use them for routine tasks.
Localization & related standards
Internationalisation, localisation, Unicode, and other language/script standards. I know how to write an application in order to be able to support different languages, scripts, and local conventions. I know what it takes to specify those language- or country-specific conventions in a standard format, and how to implement them and integrate them within the software.
Natural Languages
Persian: native speaker, fluent.
English: near-native speaker, fluent.
Arabic: studied from the age of eleven; intermediate level reading, writing, and speaking.
French: studied for one year in 2001; intermediate reading, elementary writing and speaking.
Business experience
Board member (2006-2008) and share holder at FarsiWeb, Inc. start-up.
Biotechnology Young Entrepreneur Scheme (
YES) 2010 competition participant.
Open source involvement
Gnome, OpenOffice, Redhat, Ubuntu Regularly reporting and triaging bugs since
my first fedora bug 155555 in 2005. Contributed translations and fixed internationalisation and localisation issues.
Helped the bugsquad by closing duplicates, helping to clarify bugs, confirming to reproduce bugs, submitting and testing patches, mostly within the localisation and internationalisation projects.
I learnt how quality assurance works, learnt about release cycles, and bug tracking/fixing.
Selected as a Gnome Foundation member I followed the discussions and took part in the policy making by voting.
I learnt how a large open source organisation works and what roles and responsibilities are involved.
OpenOffice Independently created the fa_IR locale and the localisation project.
OpenOffice Current localisation project coordinator for fa_IR (the Persian language of Iran.)
I learnt how to create and maintain a new project within a large open source project.
Gimp, VLC, Audacity, Songbird, Loudblog created the Persian localisation projects. Persian localisation coordinator since 2007.
Teaching, teaching assistant, and research assistant
2008 - 2010
Supervision
Co-supervising computer science MSc students and final year BSc students in their final projects.
Research assistant, Institute of Social Change, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester.
Teaching assistant for the following MSc course modules
building web applications,
advanced database management systems,
agile development with Java
Teaching assistant for the following BSc course modules (including 1 third year course module, 6 second year course modules, 4 first year course modules, and one sixth form college workshop.)
data integration and analysis,
computer networks,
computational logic,
machine learning,
artificial intelligence programming,
object oriented programming with Java 2,
2nd year lab introduction,
artificial intelligence fundamentals,
linux team project,
object oriented programming with Java for Manchester Business School,
introduction to unix,
linux command line workshop.
1999 - 2004
Hobbies, volunteering, entrusted positions, useless talents
- I have a reward cheque from Donald Knuth, Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming, for reporting a mistake in the sixteenth printing of Surreal Numbers.
- Research mentor - As a member within the School of Computer Science research mentoring team, I am responsible for academic induction of new PhD students, have given several talks on getting through different academic stages during PhD, organised social events, invited speakers, and have generally been a point of contact for computer science research students and an interface between the research students with the university, the faculty, and the CS school.
- Encyclopaediae
- Love for puzzles - Favourite readings as a child: books of Smullyan, Perelman, and Gardner on logic, physics, and mathematics puzzles. Can solve Rubik’s cube in 1'35".
- Mapping & GIS - OpenStreetMap contributions
- Music - playing the first violin in Manchester Beethoven Orchestra, Tehran Youth Chamber Orchestra, and other orchestras and charity gigs.
- Mountaineering
- volunteering at Iranian mountaineering federation
- hiking regularly - climbed the six highest peaks in Iran and the UK
- climbing indoors and outdoors - member of Manchester Climbing Centre
- Volunteering as student representative on the disciplinary committee, University of Manchester
References
References available upon request.