Hi there! I'm Parsa.



I'm currently a PhD student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). My research is related to the intersection of three main lines of research: 1) digital education, 2) NLP and ML, and 3) human-computer interaction. Based on my interest in these fields, I am passionate about designing and developing educational support assistants that can help people learn and improve their skills.

Research

PhD Student, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Research assistant at the Machine Learning for Education (ML4ED) lab led by Prof. Tanja Käser in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)

Selected Publications

-   Florian Weber, Thiemo Wambsganss, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, and Matthias Söllner. LegalWriter: An Intelligent Writing Support System for Structured and Persuasive Legal Case Writing for Novice Law Students. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024).
-   Andreas Göldi, Thiemo Wambsganss, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, and Roman Rietsche. Intelligent Support Engages Writers Through Relevant Cognitive Processes. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024).
-   Mina Lee ✦, Katy Ilonka Gero ✦, John Joon Young Chung ✦, Simon Buckingham Shum ✽, Vipul Raheja ✽, Hua Shen ✽, Subhashini Venugopalan ✽, Thiemo Wambsganss ✽, David Zhou ✽, Emad A. Alghamdi †, Tal August †, Avinash Bhat †, Madiha Zahrah Choksi †, Senjuti Dutta †, Jin L.C. Guo †, Md Naimul Hoque †, Yewon Kim †, Simon Knight †, Seyed Parsa Neshaei †, Antonette Shibani †, Disha Shrivastava †, Lila Shroff †, Agnia Sergeyuk †, Jessi Stark †, Sarah Sterman †, Sitong Wang †, Antoine Bosselut *, Daniel Buschek *, Joseph Chee Chang *, Sherol Chen *, Max Kreminski *, Joonsuk Park *, Roy Pea *, Eugenia Ha Rim Rho *, Zejiang Shen *, Pao Siangliulue *. 2023. A Design Space for Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024).
✦ Project leads, ✽ Team leads (alphabetical), † Team members (alphabetical), * Advisors (alphabetical)
 
-   Thiemo Wambsganss, Xiaotian Su, Vinitra Swamy, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, Roman Rietsche, and Tanja Käser. 2023. Unraveling Downstream Gender Bias from Large Language Models: A Study on AI Educational Writing Assistance. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023. https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.689
-   Florian Weber, Thiemo Wambsganss, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, and Matthias Söllner. 2023. Structured Persuasive Writing Support in Legal Education: A Model and Tool for German Legal Case Solutions. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2023. https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-acl.145/
-   Paola Mejia-Domenzain, Eva Laini, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, Thiemo Wambsganss, and Tanja Käser. 2023. Visualizing Self-Regulated Learner Profiles in Dashboards: Design Insights from Teachers. Artificial Intelligence in Education. Posters and Late Breaking Results, Workshops and Tutorials, Industry and Innovation Tracks, Practitioners, Doctoral Consortium and Blue Sky (AIED 2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36336-8_96
-   Xiaotian Su, Thiemo Wambsganss, Roman Rietsche, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, and Tanja Käser. 2023. Reviewriter: AI-Generated Instructions For Peer Review Writing. Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2023). https://aclanthology.org/2023.bea-1.5/
-   Sharareh Alipour, Sina Elahimanesh, Soroush Jahanzad, Parimehr Morassafar, and Seyed Parsa Neshaei. 2022. A Blockchain Approach to Academic Assessment. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2022 (CHI 2022) Extended Abstracts. No. 306. pp. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519682

Teaching

EPFL
Spring 2024: Interaction Design (Prof. Pearl Pu)

Sharif University of Technology
I voluntarily TA'ed and mentored undergraduate students in several courses (24 in total, including 13 unique courses), such as: -   Advanced Programming * 3 (Head TA * 1, Head of Exams * 3, Head of Tutorial Lectures * 1)
     -   Selected as the tutor running the best workshop by students
-   Mobile Programming (Head TA) -   Computer Architecture (Head TA) -   Discrete Structures * 2 (Chief TA * 2) -   Design of Algorithms (Chief TA) -   Artificial Intelligence * 2 (Designing Homework * 1, Tutorial Lecturer * 1) -   Data Structure and Algorithms (Designing Homework) -   Linear Algebra * 2 (Tutorial Lecturer * 1) -   Fundamentals of Programming * 4 (Head of Exams * 3) -   Web Programming (Head of the Front-end Section) -   Compiler Design (Designing Homework) -   Computer Structure and Language * 4 (Designing Homework * 4) -   Engineering Probability and Statistics (Head of Designing Homework, and Tutorial Lecturer)
The numbers after stars in front of each position indicate how many times I've had that position. Items without any number written indicate holding that position once.

Honors

2024 Awarded the "Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews" for peer reviewing a paper in ACM CHI 2024 2023 Awarded a one-year fellowship of 54,000 CHF from the EDIC doctoral school at EPFL 2022 Awarded the "Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews" for peer reviewing a paper in ACM CHI 2023 2022 Awarded the Bronze medal in the 5th International Blockchain Olympiad (IBCOL) in the "Reduced Inequalities" track for designing a decentralized blockchain-based system for peer grading and fair access to MOOCs 2022 Ranked 1 out of 199 students according to GPA among classmates in the Sharif University of Technology 2021 Ranked 1 out of 200 students according to GPA among classmates in the Sharif University of Technology 2019 Ranked 10 out of 164,278 students (among the top 0.007%) in the Mathematics field, and 8 out of 165,533 students (among the top 0.005%) in the English field in the Iranian Nationwide University Entrance Exam for Bachelor Studies (Concours) in Region 2, Iran 2018 Awarded the Special Inventor Award in the 3rd International Invention and Innovation Competition in Canada (iCan) by the Toronto International Society of Innovation and Advanced Skills (TISIAS) for designing Yekan, an app to assist education in schools 2017 Ranked 3 in National Khwarizmi Youth Award in the Computer field

Academic Service

Conference Reviewer

Served as a conference reviewer in: -   CHI 2024 * 3 (Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews * 1) -   CHI LBW 2024 * 3 -   ECIS 2024 * 2 -   CHI 2023 * 1 (Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews * 1) -   WI 2023 * 1

Notable Projects

VIRA, An intelligent NLP-powered peer review writing support assistant

EPFL, ML4ED Lab July 2022 - September 2022 Participated in: -   Developing Python code to train high-accuracy Transformer models
-   Designing the user interface and the user experience
-   Doing full-stack development and deployment of the web-based app
-   Launching the user study

RELEX, An adaptive procedural writing skills learning tool using personalized examples

EPFL, ML4ED Lab August 2022 - September 2022 Participated in: -   Developing and improving the front-end design of the system
-   Participating in UI/UX design decisions and iterative improvements

FlippED, An inclusive teacher tool for visualizing self-regulated learning profiles in flipped classrooms

EPFL, ML4ED Lab October 2022 - January 2023 Participated in: -   Developing and improving the front-end design of the system
-   Participating in UI/UX design decisions and iterative improvements

Lawrgue, An NLP-powered argumentative writing support tool for lawful texts

University of Kassel July 2022 - September 2022 Participated in: -   Developing Python code to train high-accuracy Transformer models
-   Doing full-stack development and deployment of the web-based app
-   Working in a team with international collaborators to improve the UI / UX of the system

Blockment, A courseware and MOOC platform based on blockchain with decentralized peer grading

TeIAS September 2020 - September 2022 Participated in: -   Doing full-stack development and deployment of the web-based app
-   Participating in UI/UX design decisions and iterative improvements
-   Launching the user study

Yekan, A novel school management and communication system

Marlik Innovelopers September 2016 - June 2021 Participated in: -   Developing iOS and watchOS mobile applications with Swift
-   Participating in UI/UX design decisions and iterative improvements
-   Launching the system in several schools and pedagogical environments
-   Implementing and maintaining business models for monetizing the app

More Activities

Vice President, the League of Coders Programming Contest, Sharif University of Technology

February 2022 - July 2022 Launched several contests on the introduction to Digital Design, Blockchain, and Machine Learning for first-year B.Sc. students

Editor-in-Chief of CodeNameh programming and coding magazine

September 2020 - January 2022 Launched the idea of publishing a biweekly coding magazine as a part of Fundamentals of Programming and Advanced Programming TA team for the first time in the Sharif University of Technology

Made in Lobby 2021 Chairman and Head Organizer and Made in Lobby 2020 Instructor and Mentor, Sharif University of Technology

June - August 2020 and 2021 Organized several sessions related to programming and development (Mobile Programming, Web Programming, Internet of Things, and Computer Vision)