Artificial Intelligence Lab

Artificial Intelligence Lab (PSU)
I direct the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Portland State University. The AI Lab brings together researchers across artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Reinforcement learning.

General Information

• Founded: Fall 2017

• Location: Fab 88-01, Maseeh College of Engineering

Main Research Areas

• Reinforcement Learning (RL)

  • Model-based RL (world models) and model-free RL

  • Robustness of multimodal RL

  • Applications: continual learning for time-series anomaly detection; group recommender systems

• Applied Machine Learning

  • Identifying quality-of-life drivers for autistic adults (health ML)

  • GeoAI for culvert/drainage-structure detection

  • Multispectral pedestrian detection and pedestrian/bicycle detection & counting

Current PhD Students (as of Dec 2025)

• Saba Izadkhah (PhD Candidate): RL-based group recommender systems Google Scholar | GitHub | Linkedin | Semantic Scholar | ResearchGate

• Hanin Alshanan (PhD Candidate): Robustness of Arabic transformer models 

• Bahareh Golchin (PhD Student): RL-based time-series anomaly detection, Google Scholar | GitHub | Linkedin

• Shayan Jalalipour (PhD Student): Robustness of multimodal RL, Website | GitHub | Linkedin | IEEE Author Page

• Manikanta Kotthapalli (PhD Student): VAE + RL, Google Scholar | Linkedin

PhD Alumni

• Sameerah Talafha (PhD): Deep learning for vision and text, Google Scholar | Linkedin, Currently Computer Vision Engineer at Tristar AI.

M.S. Alumni (PSU)

• Trenton Ruf (2025): Online Decision Mamba, Linkedin

• Andrew Wagner (2025): RAM-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning for Atari,  Linkedin | Website | GitHub

• Vidyavarshini Holenarasipur Jayashankar (2024), Comparative Study of World Models, Linkedin

• Sriharshitha Ayyalasomayajula (2023), Variational Autoencoders for World Models, Linkedin,  Currently AI Engineer at iLink Digital