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About

I am a Research Scientist II at Microsoft, specializing in the Speech and Security AI team under Business Application & Platform (BAP). My work focuses on optimizing the ASR pipeline through, model fine-tuning   and rigorous evaluation tests and benchmarking. Additionally, I enhance the Voice Activity Detection algorithm to improve the overall accuracy of our ASR system. Prior to this, I was a Senior Research Engineer in the speech recognition team at Nuance Communications, which was later acquired by Microsoft.

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Prior to joining Nuance, I obtained my Ph.D. from Khoury college of computer science at Northeastern University, where I worked in the Relational Agents Group under the supervision of Prof. Timothy Bickmore. 

 

My PhD research has been focused on leveraging AI and conversational agent technology to support some of the humans' tasks in a group decision-making setting. 

 

I have had two great internship experiences at Microsoft Research (summer 2015) and IBM Research (summer 2017) working with Mary Czerwinski and Vera Liao respectively.

 

Prior to coming to Northeastern, I received my B.Sc. in computer engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2012 (Tehran, Iran).

 

Internship

Work Experiences

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  • Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T., "A Multimodal Robot-Driven Meeting Facilitation System for Group Decision-Making Sessions" (ICMI 2019) (PDF)

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  • Trinh, H., Shamekhi, A., Kimani, E., Bickmore, T., “Predicting User Engagement in Longitudinal, interventions with Virtual Agents” (IVA 2018) (PDF)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Liao, Q. V., Wang, D., Bellamy, R., Erickson, T., "Face Value? Exploring the Effects of Embodiment for a Group Facilitation Agents" (CHI2018) (PDF)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T., "Breathe Deep: A Breath-sensitive Interactive Meditation Coach" (Pervasive Health 2018)

 

  • Bisafar, F., Panoda, A., Shamekhi, A., Parker, A., "A Sociotechnical Study of a Community-based Rewards Program: Insights on Building Social, Financial and Human Capital" (CSCW2018)

 

  • Liao, Q. V., Shamekhi, A., Wang, D., "Lessons from Designing and Studying a Conversational Agent for Group Facilitation" (CHI 2018 Workshop on Voice-based Conversational UX Studies and Design)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Trinh, H., Bickmore, T., DeAngelis, T., Ellis, T., Houlihan, B., Latham, N., "A Friendly Face in the Storm: Self-care Support System Requirements for Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury"  (CHI2017- WISH workshop) (PDF)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T., Gardiner, P. "Augmenting Group Medical Visits with Conversational Agents for Stress Management Behavior Change" (Persuasive Technology2017) (PDF)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Czerwinski, M., Mark, G., Novotny, M., Bennett, G., "An Exploratory study toward the preferred conversational Style for compatible virtual agents" (IVA2016) (PDF)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Trinh, H., Bickmore, T., DeAngelis, T., Ellis, T., Houlihan, B., Latham, N., "Virtual Coaches to Promote Self-care for Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury". (ASSETS2016) (PDF)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T., "Blissful Agents: Adjuncts to Group Medical Visits for Chronic Pain and Depression" (IVA2016)

 

  • Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T. "Breath with me: Virtual Meditation Coach" (IVA2015)

 

  • Gardiner, P., McCue, K., Shamekhi, A., Hempstead, MB., Yinusa,L., and Bickmore, T., "Using an Embodied Conversational Agent to Discuss Nutrition Among Young African American Women" (Integrative Medicine Conference at Harvard University 2014)

Publications

Publications

My Research

My research has been focused on the design and development of Intelligent Conversational Agents in different contexts such as health, persuasion and group collaboration in the past four years.

 

My Ph.D. work is particularly focused on designing conversational agents that support collaborative tasks in the group setting. In my research, I seek to investigate how a conversational agent can facilitate group decision-making processes, such as enforcing the meeting structure, mediating intragroup conflicts, and reducing implicit bias with the goal of improving the overall quality of the group outcome.

 

You can read more about my research and thesis project here

Research

Other Projects

Projects

Contact Me

I would always love to chat about research and other common interests. So please feel free to drop me a line here or email me if you are interested.

You can also follow me, my works, and activities on social media.

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 am.shamekhi@gmail.com

or

ashamekhi@microsoft.com 

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