Yasaman Khazaeni (IBM) Emphasizes Curiosity, Coding at CISE Industry Roundtable
Dr. Yasaman Khazaeni, a Research Staff Member and Manager – AI at IBM Research, spoke to CISE graduate students about her experience in academia and industry at the CISE Industry Roundtable on February 21st. During the session, Khazaeni emphasized the importance of curiosity and coding skills.
Khazaeni is a former student of CISE Affiliated Faculty Professor Christos Cassandras (SE, ECE). She graduated from Boston University’s College of Engineering in 2016 with a Ph.D. in 系统工程, focusing on multi-agent systems control and optimization. Before that, Khazaeni studied the application of Artificial Intelligence in reservoir modeling at West Virginia University where she received a M.S in Petroleum Engineering in 2009. She began her post-secondary education at Sharif University of Technology in Iran where she received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (2005) and a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering (2005).
When explaining her career path to students, Khazaeni said, “I owe it to my mentor Christos.” She said that during her second year at BU, Christos connected her with IBM, one of the world’s largest and most influential corporate research labs. Khazaeni had the opportunity to work with IBM city’s technology team through an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge that focused on coding visualization models for traffic control. Following graduation, she was offered a position as Research Staff Member, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Cambridge, MA.
Khazaeni’s work is extensive and ranges from robotics to data-driven models. One current focus is to combine AI with large sets of data to create “a conversational smart machine” without eliminating the human agent. She explained the difference between broad, general, and narrow Artificial Intelligence, and spoke briefly about IBM’s expansion into academia. She cited the MIT-IBM Watson Research Lab as a successful, collaborative industrial-academic lab that is advancing AI research.
A large part of Khazaeni’s success lies within application to new, complex situations. “How do we keep in mind what we learned and apply it to a new set of data?” Khazaeni asked students. “Curiosity will take the research industry to the next level.” She advised them to keep up with side projects as the research industry “can give you a large autonomy on what you choose to work on as long as you can align it with the bigger goals of the company.” She also recommended that all students be comfortable with coding because it will propel them further into their career.
Prof. Cassandras added, “the biggest value of graduate education is learning how to learn.”
“Ask questions all the time,” Khazaeni said. “Never swallow them.”