Prof. Narges Armanfard (Ph.D., P.Eng.)

Dr. Armanfard is the founder and principal investigator of the iSMART Lab. She holds the position of Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University, as well as at Mila - Quebec AI Institute. She is also affiliated with McGill Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM), McGill initiative in Computational Medicine (MiCM), and McGill Institute for Aerospace Engineering (MIAE). She earned her Ph.D. and Postdoctoral in Artificial Intelligence from McMaster University and the University of Toronto in Canada. Her contributions to the field of AI have been acknowledged through numerous awards from institutions, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, AgeWell, Vanier-Banting, the Fonds de recherche du Québec, McMaster University, McGill University, the University of Toronto, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Scale AI, National Research Council Canada, and Canada Foundation for Innovation, among others. Narges’s academic accomplishments extend to the publication of over fifty AI-focused articles across distinguished platforms, including AAAI, WACV, ECAI, BMVC, ECML PKDD, TPAMI, TNNLS, TSMC, TIFS, and more.

Sareh Soleimani

AI Researcher (Postdoctoral)

Sareh received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, both with the prestigious University of Ottawa admission scholarships. She subsequently joined Queen’s University as a postdoctoral fellow focusing on privacy-preservation audio classification for resource-constrained devices. Her research at the iSMART lab focuses on computer vision towards industrial automation.

Bahareh Nikpour

AI Researcher (PhD)

Bahareh completed her PhD at the iSMART Lab in December 2024 and continues to collaborate with the iSMART team and its partners on advancing AI for industrial automation. She was awarded the prestigious McGill Engineering Doctoral Award (MEDA) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT). Her research focuses on attention discovery in few-shot learning scenarios, leveraging deep reinforcement learning techniques with applications in computer vision.

Thi Kieu Khanh Ho

AI Researcher (PhD)

Khanh received her Master’s degree at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), South Korea. She was a researcher at Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH), South Korea, before moving to Montreal for her PhD. She has received the prestigious McGill Engineering Doctoral Award (MEDA), the GREAT Award, and the highly prestigious Vanier Scholarship. Her research focuses on time-series anomaly detection using generative models and graphs.

Hadi Hojjati

AI Researcher (PhD)

Hadi received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. He started as an MSc student at the iSMART Lab. and fast-tracked to PhD. He has received the Graduate Excellence Fellowship Award (GEF), McGill Engineering Doctoral Award (MEDA), GREAT Award, and AGE-WELL Award. He is currently doing research on multi-modal data analysis and anomaly detection employing lightweight multimodal large language models.

Dimitrios Sinodinos

AI Researcher (PhD)

Dimitrios completed his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at McGill University and was awarded the British Association Medal for graduating with the highest CGPA in the department. Shortly after starting his Master’s, Dimitrios fast-tracked into a PhD, where he received the MEDA Award and was selected into the prestigious Vadasz Scholars program. His research involves multi-task learning learning employing lightweight multimodal large language models.

Thomas Lai

AI Researcher (PhD)

Thomas received his Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) from McGill University. He joined the iSMART Lab in the summer of 2023 and subsequently pursued an MSc, focusing on open-set anomaly detection. A year after starting his Master’s at the iSMART Lab, Thomas fast-tracked into a PhD. He is a recipient of the MEUSMA and FRQ awards. His research is on open-set anomaly detection leveraging LLM models.

Alexander Koran

AI Researcher (PhD)

Alex grew up near Boston and moved to Montreal after high school to attend McGill University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence in Fall 2023. He joined the iSMART Lab in the summer of 2023 and subsequently pursued an MSc, focusing on time series anomaly detection. In January 2025, Alex began his PhD at the iSMART Lab. He is a recipient of the GEF Award and the prestigious Vadasz Engineering Fellowship. His research focuses on leveraging vision language models (VLMs) for video anomaly detection.

Navid Hassan Zadeh

AI Researcher (PhD)

Navid received his Bachelor’s degree in Joint Honours in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill University. He pursued an MSc at the Computer Science Department of the University of Montreal. He is currently an RA at the iSMART Lab. He will begin his Ph.D. studies at the iSMART Lab in September 2025. His research interests include theories of Machine Learning and its applications.

Dario Morle

AI Researcher (PhD)

Dario Morle completed his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Windsor, Canada. During his under- graduate degree, Dario assisted in research at both the Center for Computer Vision and Deep Learning, and the Human Systems Lab. After graduating in 2022, he joined IFIVEO CANADA INC. as a Deep Learning Engineer where he worked on developing and deploying computer vision solutions for industrial applications. His research interests include neural architecture design, energy-based models, and applications to industrial processes.

Jack Wei

AI Researcher (MSc)

Jack (Yi) Wei received his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from McGill University. He is the recipient of the McGill Engineering Undergraduate Student Award (MEUSMA). His interest lies in tabular data analysis.

Zihan Wang

AI Researcher (MSc)

Zihan received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada. He is now an MSc student at the iSMART Lab. He is the recipient of the Graduate Excellence Fellowship Award. His research at the iSMART Lab is focused on continual learning with large language models for anomaly detection.

Cormac Cureton

AI Researcher (MSc)

Cormac is pursuing a Master’s of Science at the iSMART lab. He obtained his Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His research interests include multi-modality, reinforcement learning, and explainability.

Abhijeet Praveen

AI Researcher (MSc)

Abhijeet is pursuing a Master’s of Science at the iSmart Lab in September 2024. He completed his Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering with a minor in Applied Artificial Intelligence from McGill University. His academic background encompasses machine learning, computer vision and software development. His research interests lie in representation learning and machine learning applications.

Aman Sidhu

AI Researcher (MSc)

Aman earned his Bachelor’s degree in Honours Electrical Engineering from McGill University. Following a research assistantship at the iSMART Lab in Fall 2024, he began pursuing his MSc at the iSMART Lab in January 2025. His research explores the application of reinforcement learning and computer vision in smart infrastructure and robotics.

Amirmohammad Naeini

Research Assistant (MSc)

Amir received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, and his Master’s degree in Computer Science from York University in Toronto, ON, Canada. He is currently a Research Assistant at the iSMART Lab, focusing on software development and AI-related projects, particularly in the context of machine learning applications.

Théophile Soulié

Research Assistant (BSc)

Made in France, assembled in Morocco, shipped to Canada, Théophile is pursuing a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering at McGill University as a James McGill Scholar. Passionate about AI and machine learning, he is particularly interested in their applications in signal processing and intelligent systems. As the founder of McGill H2, he is also engaged in sustainable energy solutions. With a strong foundation in hardware and software, Théophile is eager to contribute to cutting-edge research at the iSMART Lab.

Alexander Wyrstiuk

Research Assistant (BSc)

Alexander is currently enrolled in McGill’s Electrical Engineering BSs program and has added minors in Math and Computer Science upon developing a newfound curiosity in those fields. While at the forefront of cutting-edge technology as well as the intersection of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, AI and Machine Learning are inevitably of great interest to Alexander.

Graduate Researchers

Bahareh Nipour (PhD, Sept 2019- Dec 2024)
Moved on to (TBA)

Mohammadreza Sadeghi (PhD, Sept 2019- Dec 2024)
Moved on to Machine Learning Engineer, Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab, Montreal

Ali Karami (MSc-Thesis, Sept 2022- Aug 2024)
Moved on to Machine Learning Engineer, Instacart, Montreal

Alexnder Koran (MSc-Thesis,Jan-Dec 2024)
Moved on to PhD program at McGill University

Sushant Sinha (MSc-Thesis, Co-supervised, Sept 2022-Aug 2024)
Moved on to PhD program at Max Planck Institute, Germany

Thomas Lai (MSc-Thesis, Sept 2023- Aug 2024)
Moved on to PhD program at McGill University

Jiahao Lu (PhD Visitor Scholar, March 2023 - Feb 2024)
Moved on to the University of Copenhagen

Damien Gengler (MSc-Thesis; March-Aug 2023)
Moved on to Gravite.io as Machine Learning Engineer

Denzel Guy (MSc-Thesis Student, Co-Supervised, Sept 2021 - Aug 2023)
Moved on to Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. (KPM) as Project Manager

Dimitrios Sinodinos (MSc-Thesis Student, Sept 2022- Aug 2023)
Moved on to PhD program at McGill University

Hadi Hojjati (MSc-Thesis Student, Jan-Dec 2021)
Moved on to PhD program at McGill University

Tri-tin Truong (MSc-Thesis Student, 2021)
Moved on to Amazon in Vancouver

Shuhong Shen (MSc-Thesis Student, Co-Supervised, 2020)
Moved on to Hatch in Toronto

Undergraduate Reserachers

Alex Koran
Moved on to MSc-Thesis Student, McGill University

Thomas Lai
Moved on to MSc-Thesis Student, McGill University

Amal Koodoruth
Moved on to Data Scientist at SFJ Technologies LLC, New York, NY

Dimitrios Sinodinos
Moved on to MSc-Thesis Student, McGill University

Tri-tin Truong
Moved on to MSc-Thesis Student, McGill University

William Zhang
Moved on to Google, Seattle

Michael Li
Moved on to Google, Toronto

Zice Tang
Moved on to MSc-Thesis Student, McGill University

Ziwen Jiang
Moved on to MSc-Thesis Student, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Yeseul Lee

Hailey Kang