Hi there! I'm Parsa.


I'm currently a last-year undergraduate student in Computer Engineering at Sharif University of Technology (the best university in Iran, according to QS ranking 2023). Having a reputation of 3460 in Stack Overflow as of December 2022, my research is related to the intersection of three main lines of research: 1) human-computer interaction, 2) natural language processing and machine learning, and 3) digital education. 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. As a part of several research teams, I have participated in numerous projects which provide learning and training support to users. In addition, I've authored or participated in writing and reviewing several papers submitted to prestigious conferences such as ACM CHI, and I'm still continuing my research on educational support methods and systems.

Education

Sharif University Of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Bachelor of Computer Engineering • 2019 - Now GPA: 19.86 out of 20.0 (19.90 for the last two semesters, 19.93 for major) Rank 1 out of 199 students

Research

Summer@EPFL Internship

Research intern at the Machine Learning for Education (ML4ED) lab led by Prof. Tanja Käser in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland -   Collaborated on several research projects in the domains of machine learning, natural language processing, user experience, and human-computer interaction in the summer
-   Submitted 2 papers to ACM CHI (the top-ranked, premier conference in the field of human-computer interaction) by the end of the summer

External Research Assistant, University of Kassel, Germany

Participated in research activities under the supervision of Prof. Matthias Söllner in the fields of HCI, user experience, and educational information systems

Research Assistant, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) and Tehran Institute for Advanced Studies (TeIAS)

Participated in research activities under the supervision of Prof. Sharareh Alipour in the fields of HCI, digital education, and peer grading systems -   Published 1 paper in ACM CHI 2022 LBW

Published Papers

-   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
-  Seyed Parsa Neshaei, Amir Mahdi Namjoo, Parham Chavoshian, Parham Saremi, Mohammad Taha Jahani-Nezhad, Amirmahdi Kousheshi, and Mohammad Amin Fazli. 2022. Novel Distance-Learning Methods to Overcome Challenges Caused by COVID-19 in Undergraduate Programming Courses. 14th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (IATED EDULEARN 2022 Conference). pp. 9284-9290. https://dx.doi.org/10.21125/edulearn.2022.2233

A number of papers (in collaboration with ML4ED at EPFL) are under review in CHI 2023, which will be added to this list as soon as they are published.

TA and Mentoring

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 * 2 (Head TA * 2) -   Computer Architecture (Head TA) -   Discrete Structures * 2 (Chief TA * 2) -   Design of Algorithms (Chief TA) -   Artificial Intelligence (Designing Homework) -   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

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

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

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

EPFL, ML4ED Lab (and University of Kassel) • Starting July 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

RELEX, An adaptive procedural writing skills learning tool

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 dashboard for flipped classrooms

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

Hamta, A peer review writing tool based on generative AI

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

FLOW, An adaptive creative thinking writing assistant for students

EPFL, ML4ED Lab (and Humboldt University of Berlin) • Starting August 2022 Participated in: -   Developing and improving the front-end design of the system
-   Participating in UI/UX design decisions and iterative improvements

ALure, An NLP-powered system for detecting argumentative fallacies to improve argumentation skills

EPFL, ML4ED Lab (and University of St. Gallen) • Starting September 2022 Participated in: -   Developing Python code to train high-accuracy Transformer models
-   Doing full-stack development and deployment of the web-based app
-   Participating in UI/UX design decisions and iterative improvements
-   Working in a team with international collaborators to improve 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

Open Source

A Literature Review on HCI and Education

Lists of papers, along with short descriptions and a link for each, on a set of CS topics related to HCI and Education 2022 (In Progress) • GitHub Link

Chatomatic

A very easy to use and performant Python library for developing intelligent chatbots using Transformers 2022 (In Progress) • GitHub Link

QuickFormer

A script to quickly train and evaluate a Transformer classification model on a given dataset with one line of code 2022 (In Progress) • GitHub Link

Webber

An elegant HTTP API library in Swift with built-in caching system 2017 • GitHub Link

SwiftNotif

An elegant way to manage posting and observing notifications in Swift 2017 • GitHub Link

SimpleAsync

A simple and quick way to do async calls in Swift 2017 • GitHub Link

Work Experience

Mobile app developer, Marlik Institute of Innovation and Technology

June 2016 - June 2021

Web front-end developer, CodeStar Summer Internship

July 2021 - September 2021

More Activities

Conference Reviewer, ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2023 (CHI 2023)

October 2022 Peer-reviewed a conference paper for ACM CHI 2023

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)