CV
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Current Positions
- 01.03.2022 to date: Postdoctoral Researcher, The Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research (ISD), The Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich Medical Center (Germany)
- 01.08.2021 to date: Honarary Research Fellow, Aberdeen Biomedical Imaging Centre within the Institute of Medical Sciences, at the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition at the University of Aberdeen (UK)
- 2020 to date: EMS Technical and Data Coordinator for Exenatide-PD3 research study, a randomised, double blind, parallel group, placebo controlled, Phase III trial of Exenatide once weekly over 2 years as a potential disease modifying treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
- 2020 to date: EMS Technical and Data Coordinator for AZA-PD research study, a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled, Phase II trial on Azathioprine immunosuppression and disease modification in Parkinson’s disease.
- 2020 to date: EMS Technical and Data Coordinator for two different research studies in Ruijin (China).
- 01.07.2018 to date: Chief Technology Officer, ClearSky Medical Diagnostics Ltd..
Previous Research Positions
- 01.10.2021 to 31.01.2022: Research Associate, Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of York (UK)
- 2020-2021: Research Fellow, Aberdeen Biomedical Imaging Centre within the Institute of Medical Sciences, at the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition at the University of Aberdeen (UK) Supervised by Dr Gordon Waiter, in collaboration with Dr Neil Basu. In this research project, I am working with a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists who are focused upon unravelling the mechanisms of chronic fatigue, a salient issue across the chronic disease spectrum in the multicentre large project of The Lessening the Impact of Fatigue Trial (LIFT). Specifically, I am working on the analysis and understanding of a multimodal MRI/fMRI brain study, using machine learning techniques (including Evolutionary Algorithms), in order to identify potential central neurobiological correlates of rheumatoid arthritis related fatigue and to then characterise the most plausible mediators of fatigue which may be feasibly targeted in the future.
- 2017-2020: EMS Technical and Data Coordinator for PD-STAT research study, Simvastatin as a Neuroprotective Treatment for Parkinson’s disease, a trial of 235 participants from 23 participating NHS hospitals across the UK.
- 01.02.2019-01.08.2019: Post-Doctoral Researcher in Neuroimaging, The Neural Engineering Group within the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering and the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Dublin (Ireland) Supervised by Dr Céline de Looze and Professor Richard Reilly. In this research project, we investigated the impact cognitive impairment may have on a person’s ability to communicate and how, in turn, such cognitive and speech difficulties may affect the quality of their day-to-day interactions. This research identified speech markers and their underlying neural correlates (brain structure and functional connectivity) for the detection of cognitive impairment in MCI and AD. It also established efficient communications strategies between a person with MCI or AD and their caregivers in order to enhance the quality of their day-to-day interactions.
Education
CGP Classification of Resting-State fMRI: Towards a Brain Imaging Biomarker for Parkinson’s Disease. Topics examined included the analysis of resting state fMRI data using Dynamic Causal Modeling and timeseries analysis. The extracted features from the analyses were then subjected to the classifiers that were developed based on Cartesian Genetic Programming, Artificial Neural Networks, and Support Vector Machines.
- 2017: Translate: Me – Innovation Bootcamp, Translate: Medical Technologies (UK).
- 2015: Higher Education Academy Associate Fellow Status, following completion of York Learning and Teaching Award, University of York (UK): 1/3 of a PG Certificate in Higher Education.
- 2013: MSc Digital Signal Processing, University of York (UK).
- 2010: BSc Applied Science Electronics, University of Science and Arts of Yazd (Iran).
Work experience
- 2021: Machine Learning and Image Processing Engineer, smartR.ai, located in the Silicon Valley, smartR.ai is experienced in delivering solutions in the embedded marketspace. The company has worked on Machine Vision, Robotics, Fintech, Medical, and Consumer products for customers worldwide.
- 2014-2018: Technical Officer, ClearSky Medical Diagnostics Ltd., a spinout company which specialises in medical devices for the diagnosis and monitoring of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and a range of other neurodegenerative conditions.
- 2016-2017: Professional Engineer, My Therapy Tools Ltd., a start-up company involved in the Horizon 2020 EU programme with the project “Acquired brain injury telerehabilitation system with high impact in patient’s wellbeing at limited cost” under SME instrument phase 1 funding scheme.
- 2010-2012: Control Engineer, working in ‘Padideh Control Engineering’ Office. Programming and installing PLC devices.
Research Interests
Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Classification, Cartesian Genetic Programming, Evolutionary Algorithms, Neuroimaging data analysis, Mediation Analysis, and Neurodegenerative Diseases Diagnosis (Biomarkers) and Monitoring.
Technical Skills
Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Git, Neuroimaging data analysis software packages, MATLAB, C, R, Python, Shell, AI-based medical devices, Simatic Manager, Easyveep, Keil uVision, ORCAD, Proteus, Model Sim, Questa Sim, Xilinx Software package, ESystem, and Praat.
Publications
Dehsarvi, A., & Smith, S. L. (2018). "Classification of resting-state fMRI for olfactory dysfunction in Parkinson's disease using evolutionary algorithms." Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion on - GECCO '18. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press.
Dehsarvi, A., & Smith, S. L. (under review). "Classification of Resting-State fMRI using Evolutionary Algorithms: Towards a Brain Imaging Biomarker for Parkinson's Disease." arXiv.
Dehsarvi, A., South Palomares, J. K., & Smith, S. L. (under review). "Towards Monitoring Parkinson's Disease Following Drug Treatment: CGP Classification of rs-MRI Data." arXiv.
De Looze, C., Dehsarvi A., Crosby, L., Vourdanou, A., Coen, R. F., Lawlor, B., & Reilly, R. B. (2021). "Cognitive and structural correlates of conversational speech timing in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild-to-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease: relevance for early detection approaches."; Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 13:637404. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2021.637404.
Dehsarvi, A., South Palomares, J.K., Smith, S.L. (2022). Towards Automated Monitoring of Parkinson's Disease Following Drug Treatment. In: El Yacoubi, M., Granger, E., Yuen, P.C., Pal, U., Vincent, N. (eds) Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence. ICPRAI 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13364. Springer, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-09282-4_17.
De Looze, C., Dehsarvi A., Crosby, L., Vourdanou, A., Coen, R. F., Lawlor, B., & Reilly, R. B. (2022). "Structural Correlates of Overt Sentence Reading in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild-to-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease"; Current Alzheimer Research. 19. doi: 10.2174/1567205019666220805110248.
Bucholc, M., James, C., Khleifat, A. al, Badhwar, A., Clarke, N., Dehsarvi, A., Madan, C. R., Marzi, S. J., Shand, C., Schilder, B. M., Tamburin, S., Tantiangco, H. M., Lourida, I., Llewellyn, D. J., Ranson, J. M. (2023). Artificial Intelligence for Dementia Research Methods Optimization. http://arxiv.org/abs/2303.01949
Talks
April 15, 2021
Talk at University of York - Department of Electronic Engineering, York, United Kingdom
May 10, 2021
Talk at Imperial College London, London, UK
July 07, 2021
Talk at DEMON Network, Aberdeen, UK
June 02, 2022
Talk at Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence. ICPRAI 2022, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
Teaching
Service and leadership
- 2023: Conference committee member of EvoApplications*, 26th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, part of evo*2023, held in Brno (Czech Reublic).
- 2022: Conference committee member of ICONIP 2022*, 29th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, in New Delhi (India).
- 2022: Conference committee member of EvoApplications*, 25th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, part of evo*2022, held in Madrid (Spain).
- 2021: Reviewer for the journal of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
- 2021: SINAPSE-IA Deputy Lead
- 2021: Reviewer for the journal of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines.
- 2021: Conference committee member of EvoApplications*, 24th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, part of evo*2021, held virtually.
- 2020: Conference committee member of EvoApplications*, 23rd European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, part of evo*2020, held virtually.
- 2020: Conference committee member of The 10th International Conference on Soft Computing for Problem Solving (SocProS 2020), held in Indore (India).
- 2017-2019: Association for Computing Machinery member.
- 2014-2018: IEEE student member.
- 2016: Conference committee member of The International Conference for Students on Applied Engineering (ICSAE 2016) held in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK).
- 2016: Conference Chair of The 31st Annual Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group Conference held in York (UK).
- 2016: Conference committee member of York Doctoral Symposium
- 2014-2016: Postgraduate Representative at The Department of Electronic Engineering, University of York (UK).
