About Me
A Brief Introduction
I am an AI researcher passionate about Natural Language Processing, with a deep focus on bias and fairness, low-resource languages, and computational social science. My academic journey has been driven by a commitment to understanding and mitigating inequalities in language technologies across diverse linguistic communities. I believe that ethical and inclusive AI is not just a technical challenge, but a social responsibility. Through my research, I aim to build language models that are more equitable, transparent, and accessible for underrepresented languages and speakers.
Research Interests
What I Work On
Natural Language Processing
Developing methods for understanding, generating, and reasoning with human language across diverse contexts and languages.
Bias and Fairness
Identifying, measuring, and mitigating systematic biases in language models to ensure equitable outcomes for all users.
Low-resource Languages
Bridging the digital divide by building NLP tools and resources for underrepresented and low-resource linguistic communities.
Computational Social Science
Leveraging large-scale text data to study social phenomena, public opinion, and the societal impact of language technologies.
Education
Academic Background
Master of Computer Science
Major: Artificial Intelligence
Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, Iran
Thesis: "Early Discovery of Emerging Entities in Persian Twitter with Online Clustering" — Score: 19/20
Supervisor: Dr. Mohsen Afsharchi · Advisor: Dr. Mohsen Hooshmand
Bachelor of Computer Engineering
Major: Software Engineering
Institute of Higher Education of Science and Technology, Urmia, Iran
Thesis: "Designing and Implementing a Website for the Automation Department of Urmia Municipality" — Score: 19/20
Supervisor: Dr. Parviz Rashidi
Publications
Selected Works
S. Yousefi, ELE. Valladares, R. Mitkov: "Cross-Lingual Hate Speech Detection in Low-Resource Languages: The Case of Persian and Kurdish"
International Conference on Language Technologies for Low-resource Languages
S. Yousefi, A. Spitz: "Bias and Fairness in Language Models for Low-Resource Languages: A Survey"
Association for Computational Linguistics
S. Yousefi, M. Hooshmand, M. Afsharchi: "Early Discovery of Emerging Entities in Persian Twitter with Semantic Similarity"
9th International Conference on Web Research, Published in: IEEE
Research Experience
Research Positions
Research Collaboration
University of Konstanz — Germany (Remote)
Supervisor: Prof. Andreas Spitz
- Conducting a data-driven survey on Bias and Fairness in Language Models for Low-Resource Languages.
- Systematically reviewing and categorizing bias types, evaluation metrics, and mitigation strategies.
Research Assistant
IASBS — Zanjan, Iran (On-site)
Supervisor: Dr. Mohsen Afsharchi
- Developed a multimodal dataset based on Instagram (image + text) for multimodal NLP research.
Research Intern
Bielefeld University — Germany (Remote)
Supervisor: Prof. Steffen Eger
- Worked on Language Change and Dependency Parsing for Historical Languages using German and English datasets.
Research Assistant
IASBS — Zanjan, Iran (On-site)
Supervisor: Dr. Mohsen Hooshmand
- Collected and curated data on Persian Twitter based on Wikipedia Knowledge Base.
- Built an emerging context dataset to discover emerging entities based on Twitter data.
Professional Activities
Service & Engagement
Organising Committee Member
May — Sept 2026LaTeLL 2026 — International Conference on Language Technologies for Low-Resource Languages
Fes, Morocco — Contributing to the organization and coordination of an international conference focused on NLP and low-resource languages.
Invited Reviewer
Jun — Jul 2026LaTeLL 2026
Reviewed 3 research papers.
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant
Real Time Systems
IASBS
Instructor: Dr. Mahmoud Shirazi · Textbook: Real-Time Systems — 2nd Ed., Jane W.S. Liu
Advanced Database System
IASBS
Instructor: Dr. Mahmoud Shirazi · Textbook: Fundamentals of Database Systems — 7th Ed., Elmasri & Navathe
Work Experience
Industry Roles
AI Researcher and Developer
TechChain
- Researched and deployed optimal NLP models while managing a team of 4 interns using Agile workflows.
Technical Support
Kavosh Ertebat (Himax | Pishgaman)
- Provided technical support and managed IT infrastructure for telecommunications services.
Industrial Projects
Built at TechChain
Opal AI — Instagram Analytics
AI Developer at TechChain
- SWOT analysis, automated posting schedules, AI-generated content ideas (image, video, voice).
Chatbot AI — RAG Pipeline
Chatbot AI Developer at TechChain
- RAG pipelines over domain-specific documents (oil & gas) using Ollama for local LLM deployment.
Skills & Tools
Technical Proficiency
Core Technologies
NLP & ML Knowledge
Libraries, Frameworks & Models
Soft Skills
Languages
Spoken Languages
English
Fluent
German
Elementary
Persian
Fluent
Kurdish
Native
Accomplishments
Selected Achievements
Paper Presentation
Paper presentation at the 9th International Conference on Web Research (ICWR2023).
May 3-4, 2023
Summer School
Online summer school of "Data Analysis and Applications", Sino.
August 21 - September 2, 2022
Deep Learning Workshop
Workshop on "Deep Learning with PyTorch".
September 4-6, 2021 | Held virtually in Zanjan, Iran
IPM Advanced School
5th IPM advanced school on "Computing Artificial Intelligence".
September 5-8, 2021 | Held virtually in Tehran, Iran
Data Science in R
Completion of the course on "Introduction to Data Science in R". Tutored by: Mohammad Shokoohi-Yekta - Data Scientist at Apple.
March 9, 2019 | Science and Technology Park, Zanjan, Iran
Deep Learning Tutorial
Participation in the "Deep Learning" tutorial at the International Conference on Contemporary Issues in Data Science (CiDaS).
March 5-6, 2019
Beyond Research