Alumni
ANDREW WADE
Andrew was a member of the Integrated Science Lab, working with Boeing on aircraft safety. He was among 19 passengers killed in a plane crash while sightseeing in Mount Everest. He was awarded the Master of Science degree posthumously.
"Andrew touched all who knew him with his optimism, ability, and enthusiasm for his work and for the adventure travel that he loved. His warmth and good nature lifted the spirits and enriched the lives of his lab mates and colleagues." - Dr. Brian Fisher
Dr. Samar al-Hajj
Dr. Samar Al-Hajj is an Assistant Research Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut (AUB). She is the Director of the NIH funded MENA Program for Advanced Injury Research (MENA PAIR) at AUB, aiming at strengthening injury research in Lebanon and the Middle Eastern Region and generating evidence to raise awareness, transform attitudes, and reduce injuries.
Research interest: Injury Prevention, Emergency and Disaster Preparedness, Blast Injury
Dr. Richard Arias-Hernández
Dr Arias-Hernández is an Associate Professor of Teaching at the School of Information at UBC, and teaches courses on digital libraries, digital collections, information systems, information visualization, data management, analytics, and visualization at the iSchool graduate programs and in the Bachelor of Media Studies (BMS).
Research interest: curriculum design for archival studies programs to leverage and incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into archival and records management practices, design and evaluation of community-engaged learning for information studies graduate programs, and design and evaluation of interdisciplinary (media and informatics) undergraduate programs
Aldo Ahkin Barrera-Machuca
Aldo is currently a senior member of the Data Visualization Team at Statistics Canada where we works alongside multiple government stakeholders to develop dashboards for internal business intelligence, and for public dissemination. He has 4+ years of experience creating dashboards (Tableau, PowerBI) and 2+ years in providing scientific consulting in cognitive engineering for User Interface design, UI/UX design for digital healthcare.
Research interest: mixed methods stemming from HCI, anthropology and healthcare, with ongoing collaborations in population health research.
DR. NADYA CALDERON
Once a software engineer turned UX researcher and visual analytics practitioner PhD, Nadya drives their practice with curiosity and the understanding of how much impact researchers bring to business and product strategy. Nadya is a mixed-methods researcher, an empathetic practitioner, and a growing leader of research teams.
Research interest: Design Research, Information Visualization and Visual Analysis to inform the design of interactive visual analytics interfaces to support decision-making
DR. PAYAM RAHMDEL
With over 20 years of professional and academic experience, Dr. Payam Rahmdel is a highly skilled financial advisor serving clients across Canada. Payam's core focus is on wealth management, retirement planning, and tax-efficient estate transfer. He is dedicated to promoting financial literacy and education, providing a platform for clients of all backgrounds to easily understand complex financial products and concepts, enabling them to make informed decisions and take advantage of the best opportunities.
Research interest: Applied AI and machine learning in various industries, including technology, heavy equipment, and mining.
DR. TERA GREENSMITH
Tera is currently a Principal Data Scientist at AT&T Mobility, where she extends her graduate studies by studying human behavior in a Big Data environment.Tera holds a PhD, summa cum laude, and was under the senior supervision of Brian Fisher. Tera holds a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in Psychology, with minor in Cognitive Science (2008). Undergraduate research was conducted largely out of the Charlotte Visualization Center under the mentorship William Ribarsky, Ph.D., Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center and Chair, Department of Computer Science. Undergradate projects included the creation of the Human Cognition Model, a descriptive framework and research agenda, and early work in comparative studies of human learning and interaction behaviours.
Research interest: Applied cognitive science for visual analytics, with a emphasis on the roles and impact of individual differences on complex cognition, the mechanization of complex reasoning, the development of cognitive models for mixed initiative interfaces, and the use of intelligent agents in the creation of intuitive visual analytics interfaces.
DR SYAVASH NOBARANY
Syavash finished my PhD at UBC Department of Computer Science, where he worked with Kellogg Booth at the IMAGER Lab. He studied Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Supported Human-Human Interaction, and Social Computing. Syavash has completed many UX/HCI research projects (including prototyping, design, implementation, experiment design, running studies, data analysis and writing papers) and published the results in top journals and conferences. He has also built a web-application for a startup he co-founded from the ground up (including architecture, frontend, backend, security, etc.).
Research interest: Understanding researchers’ needs, behavior, and motivations and design of user interfaces and collaborative processes to support their interactions.
ALI KHALILI-ARAGHI
Ali has a B.Sc. in Software Engineering at University of Tehran, Iran. He also finished my M.Sc. in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University with the focus on Software Engineering. The main focus of his Master studies was towards the Marine Safety and Security Operation Centres, and providing an Intelligent Decision Support architecture for the system used in the centres.
Research interest: Collaborative multi-agent systems, focusing on decision support tools for Safety and Security domains.
CAITLIN AKAI
Caitlin is one of those rare individuals that has a calm business sense and a technical sense in an ever-changing environment. Caitlin is a talented web conversions and a usability expert.
Research interest:
DR. MONA HARATY
Big believer in following one's curiosity and interest when it comes to education or doing any great work.
Research interest:
DR NATHALIE PREVOST
Nathalie is trained as a developer and a designer, and also holds a PhD in Cognitive systems (a branch of Computer Science). Nathalie has much experience creating and getting funding for projects that link industry, academia and government. She was also the founder of Robot Girl vs Zombie Inc. which focused on cognitive wellness. Nathalie brought to market two products, Kwai Kwai, an intelligent, interactive friend for kids with anxiety and Sop Sop and the brain interactive book app for tablets.
Research interest: The evolution of natural language through deep learning type models