Reza Davari PhD Student @ Mila and Concordia University AI enthusiast, currently focused on NLP, CV, and CL. A watermelon connoisseur. Based in Montreal, QC.

This is Reza 👋

I am currently a PhD student at Mila and Concordia University I am interested in Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision and their industrial applications. Currently, my research is focused on the study of continual, federated, and self-supervised learning. I am interested in both the theoretical and applied studies of these domains. I document my learning notes in this blog. Send me an email: davari.mreza@gmail.com if you have questions or find any errors. Thank you 😊

Skills

Career

Jun 2024 - Aug 2024 Applied Scientist Intern @ Microsoft Microsoft logo
  • Developed a novel method for system prompt migration and optimization, achieving SOTA on multiple NLP benchmarks
  • Implemented automatic LLM-based metric creation and metric evaluation given a target feature
  • Observed product lift for prompt migration, reducing manual migration time
Nov 2023 - May 2024 Data Scientist @ Concordia Applied AI Institute Concordia Applied AI Institute logo
  • Developed and helped deploy an NLP solution using BERT to automatically populate evaluation forms of long complex legal government contracts
  • Implemented content highlighting to help users verify the context used by the model to reach a decision for each evaluation criterion
  • Contributed to scoping new projects and writing NLP project proposals for new clients and feature requests
Mar 2023 - Oct 2023 Data Scientist @ Eiffel MedTech Eiffel MedTech logo
  • Developed an EOS X-ray image processing pipeline for 3D lower limb point cloud reconstruction, including bone and prosthetic segmentation
  • Implemented fine-tuned Segment Anything Model (SAM) with manually labelled data for precise segmentation
  • Created a Transformer-based neural network for 3D bone reconstruction from DRR and CT scan pairs. Deployed the pipeline on local servers for practical use
Jun 2022 - Sep 2022 Applied Research Scientist Intern @ Amazon (Science) Amazon (Science) logo
  • Developed a novel method based on contrastive learning and self-prediction to learn universal user embeddings
  • Applied the proposed user embedding to in-production downstream tasks and observed boost in performance
  • The results were published in AMLC (Amazon internal Machine Learning Conference)
Sep 2021 - Feb 2022 ML Technical Support Specialist @ Ericsson Ericsson logo
  • Led the ML technical support of three projects: customer service chatbot, Python code completion, and sensitive log detection
  • Carried out a series of NLP tutorials on the industrial applications of large scale language models
  • Conducted workshops on data ingestion, processing, and visualisation
Sep 2021 - Feb 2022 Data Scientist Intern @ Ubisoft Divertissements Inc. Ubisoft Divertissements Inc. logo
  • Implemented hierarchical span-based toxicity detection model on in-game chat data
  • Collaborated on implementing data annotation procedures
Sep 2020 - Jun 2021 ML Team Lead @ Coveo Solutions Inc. Coveo Solutions Inc. logo
  • Led a group of 5 ML Scientist and Engineers on several NLP projects
  • Collaborated with the product managers to plan road maps and communicate with customers/stakeholders
  • Researched and implemented multi-task learning models to improve information flow between tasks and reduce resource consumption
  • Researched and implemented an extractive Question Answering system for clients with minimally labeled data
  • Adapted Continual Learning techniques to mitigate catastrophic forgetting and reduce training costs
Sep 2019 - Sep 2020 ML Scientist @ Coveo Solutions Inc. Coveo Solutions Inc. logo
  • Served ML models using TorchServe on Docker images in EMR
  • Quantized and pruned the ML models to minimize the resources used and maximize throughput
  • Implemented parallel and distributed model training on GPU
  • Implemented a dynamic taxonomy prediction for queries, and used attention mechanism to gray-box the model
  • Researched and implemented Transformer-based query retrieval system for long queries
  • Implemented product content embedding based on product description and visual representation
  • Participate in ML recruitment events and conduct technical interviews
  • Initiated and organized "paper club", a bi-weekly workshop on the recent developments in ML
  • Represented Coveo at NLP events such as MILA, RALI, MTL-NLP, etc.
May 2019 - Sep 2019 ML Developer Intern @ Coveo Solutions Inc. Coveo Solutions Inc. logo
  • Implemented parallel model building on EMR clusters
  • Implemented bigram and trigram model for product recommendation: frequently bought together recommender

Education

Jan 2021 - Mila and Concordia University Mila logo Mila logo
  • PhD of Computer Science: Continual Learning (GPA: 4.0)
  • Supervisors: Dr. Eugene Belilovsky
  • Scholarships:
    • Concordia Merit Scholarship (2021)
    • Graduate Doctoral Incentive Fellowship (2021)
Sep 2017 - May 2020 Concordia University Concordia University logo
  • Master of Computer Science: Natural Language Processing (GPA: 3.95)
  • Supervisors: Dr. Leila Kosseim and Dr. Tien Bui
  • Scholarships:
    • Concordia Merit Scholarship (2018 and 2019)
    • Concordia University Conference and Exposition Award (2019)
    • IVADO Student Grant (2020)
Sep 2013 - Dec 2016 McGill University McGill University logo
  • Bachelor of Science: Double Major in Mathematics and Computer Science
  • Represented McGill University in Putnam Competition in both 2014 and 2015
Sep 2011 - May 2013 Dawson College Dawson College logo
  • DEC in Pure and Applied Science
  • Dawson Mathematics Competition: 1st place in 2012 and 2nd place in 2011

Teaching Experience

May 2018 - Dec 2019 Teaching Assistant @ Concordia University Concordia University logo
  • Comp-472: Artificial Intelligence
  • Comp-339: Combinatorics
  • Comp-5361: Discrete Structures and Formal Languages
  • Comp-335: Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science
September 2015 - May 2016 Teaching Assistant @ McGill University McGill University logo
  • Math-242: Analysis 1
  • Math-255: Honours Analysis 2
September 2011 - May 2016 Teaching Assistant @ Dawson College Dawson College logo
  • Linear Algebra
  • Probability and Statistics
  • Calculus 1, 2, and 3
September 2013 - May 2016 Private Tutor @ Liberty Tutoring Liberty Tutoring logo
  • Linear Algebra
  • Probability and Statistics
  • Calculus 1, 2, and 3
  • Waves and Optics
  • Mechanics
  • Electricity and Magnetism