About Me
I'm an NLP researcher specializing in transformer-based models for natural language understanding. I hold an M.Sc. in Computer Software Engineering from the University of Kashan, where I developed "CTRAN," the current state-of-the-art for the slot-filling task.
I'm interested in improving large language models by enhancing their capability to understand structured data where the structure itself contains information. This field poses new challenges that are handled on a case-by-case basis right now. The next step is to automate this process so an LLM can easily comprehend the structure while reading the data.
In general, I think NLP is at the forefront of science and will reshape how we live our lives in the near future. This change should be for the good and be focused on improving our quality of life. Currently, LLM's application in healthcare is one field I find most fascinating.
Prior to graduate school and alongside my undergraduate studies, I spent five years as an entrepreneur, programming mobile apps & backend services for the local market. My background in both the industry and academia gives me a unique perspective on their challenges and benefits. I'm choosing to stay in academia in the future because I feel there is no point in discovering new knowledge if you're the only one benefiting from it.
I am currently seeking PhD positions starting in 2025! If you know of any faculty specializing in my research interests below who are looking for students, please reach out via email at mehrdad.rafie.p (at) gmail. I am also open to productive collaborations. If you share my research interests, please get in touch.
Research Interests
🔹 Large Language Models:
▫️ Instruction-Following
▫️ Explainability
▫️ Evaluation
▫️ MultiLingual & Lowresource Languages
▫️ Augmentation with Graphs
🔹 Dialogue systems
🔹 Natural Language Processing for Social Good
🔹 Natural Language Understanding