Farzaneh MirzazadehPhD in Computer Science

University of AlbertaCanada

B mirzazad@ualberta.caÍ webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/ mirzazad/

Research interestsMachine Learning.

Research experienceComputational machine learning, convex modeling, convex and non-convex globaloptimization, metric learning, joint embedding, association learning, link prediction ingraphs, novel methods for structured output prediction.

JobsJan 2017-present

(Sole) Instructor of the Upper Level Machine Learning Course, Department ofComputer Science, University of California Santa Cruz, California, USA.

Education2010– 2016 PhD, Computing Science (GPA 3.9/4), University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada, Su-

pervisors: Dr. Dale Schuurmans and Dr. Russell Greiner.2007–2009 MSc, Computing Science, University of Alberta, Canada.2005–2007 MSc, Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Iran.2000–2004 BSc, Computer Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran.1993-2000 Mathematics and Physics Diploma, Farzanegan High School and Middle School, Na-

tional Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET), Tehran, Iran.

Publications[1] Farzaneh Mirzazadeh, Siamak Ravanbakhsh, Nan Ding, and Dale Schuurmans, Embedding

constraints for structured multi-label prediction, Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS),2015.

[2] Farzaneh Mirzazadeh, Martha White, András György, and Dale Schuurmans, Scalable metriclearning for co-embedding, European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML), 2015.

[3] Farzaneh Mirzazadeh, Yuhong Guo and Dale Schuurmans, Convex co-embedding, In Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2014.

[4] Farzaneh Mirzazadeh and Saeed Bagheri Shouraki, Online recognition of handwritten Persianwords using a novel hierarchical fuzzy system, International Conference on Soft Computing andIntelligent Systems (ICSCIS), 2007.

[5] Farzaneh Mirzazadeh, Babak Behsaz, and Hamid Beigy, A new learning algorithm for MAXQhierarchical reinforcement learning method, International Conference on Information and Commu-nication Technology (IEEE ICICT), 2007.

[6] Reza Safabakhsh and Farzaneh Mirzazadeh, AUT-Talk: a Farsi talking head, Information andCommunication Technologies (IEEE ICTTA), 2006.

Publication in progress[1] Farzaneh Mirzazadeh, Jingjiao Ni, Russell Greiner, Metric Learning for Ordinal Regression

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ResearchPhD Thesis Solving Association Problems with Convex Co-embedding

Nominated for Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, University of AlbertaAdvisor Dr. Dale Schuurmans and Dr. Russell Greiner, University of Alberta, Canada

Description My thesis addresses the problem of association learning, i.e. learning element-wise associationsbetween a number of sets from data. Instances of such problems are multi-label classification,ranking, tagging, and link prediction, with applications such as image annotation, multi-modalrepresentation learning, and knowledge graph completion. Primary focus of my dissertation is onconvex formulations, which makes optimization tractable and consistent. The main contributionsof my work is as follows. First, this wide set of problems is unified as all instances of associationproblems, and a single solution is formulated for it in terms of co-embedding (i.e. joint embedding)of the sets. Second, proposing tractable training formulations and global optimization algorithmsfor the two primary variants of the co-embedding approach, one based on alignment and the otherbased on distance. Third, by using a constrained version of co-embedding, a novel approach forstructured output prediction problems is proposed. Unlike previous methods, this model guaranteesthe structure to hold at train and test time (for future data) by incorporating the required structuredirectly into the representation, without requiring inference at train or test time. Such a designleads to significant time savings for structured prediction, particularly at test time, which is crucialfor time sensitive user facing applications.

MSc Thesis 2(in CS)

Subject: Applications of machine learning in large scale bioinformatics, Title: Using SNP data topredict radiation toxicity for prostate cancer patients, Advisor: Dr. Russell Greiner, Universityof Alberta, Canada.

MSc Thesis 1(in CE)

Subject: Farsi OCR, Title: Online recognition of handwritten Persian (Farsi) words, Advisor:Dr. Saeed Bagheri Shouraki, Sharif University of Technology, Iran.

BSc Thesis Subject: Synthesis of Farsi speech and lip movement for animation faces. Title: Design andimplementation of a Persian (Farsi) talking head, Advisor: Dr. Reza Safabakhsh, AmirkabirUniversity of Technology, Iran.

Major honors, awards, and scholarships2016 PhD Thesis Nominated for Outstanding Thesis Award, (Final results not announced yet),

University of Alberta, Canada.2014, 2011 Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship, Government of Province of Alberta.

2012 University of Alberta President’s Doctoral Prize of Distinction, President of University ofAlberta, 2 years.

2012 Canadian National Award of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)Postgraduate Scholarship, Government of Canada, 2 years.

2005 Iranian Graduate Scholarship, Full funding coverage for studying M.Sc. in the top rankingIranian University of Technology (Sharif U.T.), Government of Iran, 2 years.

2001 Iranian Undergraduate Scholarship, Full funding coverage for studying B.Sc. in the high rankingAmirkabir University of Technology, Government of Iran, 4 years.

Other awards2014-2015 Travel grants from: NIPS 15, Women in Machine Learning 15-14, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Research (FGSR) 15 (University of Alberta), AAAI 142014 Department of Computing Science GPA Award (University of Alberta)

2013-2014 Graduate Student Association (GSA) Development Award, University of Alberta2012 Canadian Scholarship from Alberta Innovates Technology Futures Top-up Award, 2 years2002 ACM-ICPC Honorable Mention, In ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, West Asian

Regional Stage

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Research mentorship2016 Jingjiao Ni, Undergraduate summer intern, Advisor: Professor Greiner, University of Alberta, Topic:

Ordinal Regression2015 Zheng Shi, Master’s student, Advisor: Professor Greiner, University of Alberta, Topic: Adapting

Preference Learning to Predict the Sites of Metabolism

PresentationsOral European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML 15) , Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference on

Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 14), University of Alberta AI Seminar (Sep 2015)Poster Women in Machine Learning Workshop 14-15

Teaching assistantshipCMPUT 204 Design and Analysis of Algorithms, University of Alberta, Winter 14.CMPUT 174 Introduction to the Foundations of Computation I (Python Programming), University of

Alberta, Winter 13.CMPUT 656 Representation Learning, University of Alberta, Winter 12, By Professor Dale Schuurmans.CMPUT 115 Programming with Data Structures, University of Alberta, Winter 11.CMPUT 466 Machine Learning, University of Alberta, Fall 10, By Professor Dale Schuurmans.CMPUT 272 Discrete Math, University of Alberta, Winter/Fall 08; Winter/Fall 09; Winter 10.CMPUT 101 Introduction to Computing, University of Alberta, Fall 07.

CE 415 Theory of Languages and Automata, Sharif University of Technology, Winter/Fall 06.

Recent coursesCVX 101 Convex Optimization, Dr. Stephen Boyd, Spring 2014, Stanford online course, Certificate

received.CMPUT 605 Loss Functions in Machine Learning, Dr. Dale Schuurmans, Winter 2011, University of Alberta,

Grade A+.CMPUT 605 Elements of Statistical Learning, Dr. Csaba Szepesvari, Fall 2010, University of Alberta, Grade

A+.CMPUT 656 Matrix and Convex Methods in Machine Learning, Dr. Dale Schuurmans, Winter 2010,

University of Alberta, Grade A+.CMPUT 551 Machine Learning, Dr. Russell Greiner, Fall 2008, University of Alberta, Grade A+.

ProgrammingLanguages C++, Julia, Matlab, Python, Java

Deep learningpackages

TensorFlow

Optimization Languages: Matlab, Julia, Solver/tools: CPLEX, Yalmip, CVX, LBFGSB, PBMVersion Cntrl SVN, GIT

Service and outreachProgram

CommitteeAISTATS 16, AAAI 17, AISTATS 17

Reviewer for AAAI 15, IEEE Transactions in Knowledge and Data Engineering 16, IJCAI 16, COLT 16Member of University of Alberta Graduate Professional Development Committee, 2015-2016

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