Biography

My research focuses on natural language processing, information retrieval, and scalable data science. Specifically, I investigate large language models and dialog systems with the goal of developing personalizable, interpretable, and safe conversational AI systems. Additionally, I explore scalable data science methodologies across disciplines, leveraging NLP and machine learning in collaboration with domain experts.

My research has appeared in top venues such as WWW, SIGIR, KDD, CIKM, and VLDB.

News

  • Received NSF Grant as PI with Brent Harrison (co-PI). III: Small: Toward User-Centric Task-Oriented Dialog Systems via Zero-shot Adaptation and Personalization; Amount: $599,898; Start Date: 9/1/2024, End Date 8/31/2027. Details
  • Received Planning Grant from NSF as co-PI with Simone Silvestri (PI) and collaborators from Penn State University. Planning: DCL EPSCOR: CISE Large: Distributed Edge Intelligence in Support of Next-Generation Applications; Amount: $100,000; Start Date: 10/1/2024, End Date 9/30/2025. Details

Selected Publications

Journal / Other Publications

Graduate Students

Current Students

Adib Mosharrof
Moghis Fereidouni
Muhammad Umair Haider

Alumni

Ayesha Siddiqua Dina (Co-adviser: PhD '23 Assistant Professor at Florida Polytechnic University)

Professional Experience

University of Kentucky

08/2021 - Present: Assistant Professor

University of California, Riverside

09/2017 - 06/2021: Graduate Student Researcher

University of Management & Technology, Pakistan

09/2009 - 08/2017: Lecturer

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science
09/2017 - 06/2021

University Of California, Riverside
Advisor: Professor Vagelis Hristidis

M.S. in Computer Science
08/2008 - 06/2011

Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan

B.S. in Computer Science
08/2003 - 01/2008

International Islamic University, Pakistan

Teaching Expertise

  • Natural Language Processing with Deep Neural Networks
    Spring '22, Spring '23.
  • Machine Learning
    Fall '21, Fall '22, Fall '23, Fall '24.
  • Algorithm Design
    Fall '23, Fall '24.
  • Intermediate Topics in Database Systems
    Spring '24.

Service & Outreach

  • Program Committees
    ACL RR 21-24, NeurIPS 21-24, ICML 20-24, ICLR 21-25, WWW 21-24, ACM KDD 23-24, AAAI 22-25, CIKM 22-24, IEEE ICSC 22-24, IEEE Big Data '24.
  • Mentoring
    Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Graduate Summit, UCR 2020.