I am the director of Artificial Intelligence Lab at Portland State University.
The AI Lab brings together researchers across the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics.
The AI Lab was founded in Fall 2017. We are now located in Engineering A0405C at Maseeh College of Engineering.
Main Areas of Research
Reinforcement learning (RL)
Model Based (World Models) and Model free RL
Robustness of Multi Modal RL
Applications: (Continual Learning) Time Series Anomaly Detection, Group Recommendation System
Applied machine learning: identifying quality-of-life factors for autistic adults, culvert detection, pedestrian/bicycle detection and counting, and public health.
Current PhD Students @ Artificial Intelligence Lab as of Dec 2025:
Saba Izadkhah (PhD Candidate): RL based Group Recommendation System
Hanin Alshanan (PhD Candidate): Robsutness of Arabic Transformers
Bahareh Golchin (PhD): RL based Anomaly Detection
Shayan Jalalipour (PhD): Robustness of Multi Modal RL
Manikanta Kotthapalli (PhD)
PhD Alumni:
Sameerah Talafha (PhD): Deep Learning
M.S. Alumni at PSU:
Trenton Ruf, 2025
Andrew Wagner, 2025
Vidyavarshini Holenarasipur Jayashankar, 2024
Sriharshitha Ayyalasomayajula, 2023