I am an Assistant Professor (tenure track) at the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University-Camden. Before joining Rutgers, I served as an assistant professor and MS in Bioinformatics program director at the Department of Computer Science at Morgan State University (MSU), Baltimore, MD, USA. Before joining MSU, I was a Postdoctoral research scholar at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa (UIOWA), Iowa City, IA, USA. I received my Ph.D. in computer science (majoring in Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology) from Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia. I did my master’s degree in computer science and information technology at MultiMedia University (Cyberjaya, Malaysia), and bachelor’s degree in computer science and Engineering (CSE) at Shiraz University (Shiraz, Iran).

Research

My research focuses are on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics & computational biology in general. I work on the challenges associated with the design and development of robust, general, and accurate systems for several important problems in bioinformatics and computational biology such as, protein local and global structure prediction, genome variants analysis, cancer subtype classification, and studying the impact of somatic mutations in cancer research, in specific. My main focus is on using machine learning techniques with an emphasis on deep learning architecture, support vector machines, and ensemble classifiers (homogeneous and heterogeneous). My research in these areas has led to more than 100 publications in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and conferences with over 4200 citations (h-index = 36 and i10-index = 77).