Design with Data and AI for Optimized Experience Sampling

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)

During my PhD, as a member of the STRAP (Self TRAcking for Prevention and diagnosis of heart disease, an NWO-funded project) consortium I offer my data science and software engineering expertise, and I have been doing research about data-driven and smart adaptive systems that improve acceptance, adherence, and quality of data collection, especially in the context of the Experience Sampling Method. Accordingly, I have done numerous user studies with participants at TU/e and in collaboration with institutions such as Utrecht University, GGz Centraal, and Wageningen University. You can find a detailed overview of my PhD work in this doctoral consortium workshop paper and in the TU/e research portal.

FOSS contributions

During my PhD, I have created the following open-source projects:

Experiencer

A smartwatch-based experience sampling tool

SAPPHIRE

SimulAting PrticiPant beHavIoR during Experiments

prompt4code

Automated In-Context Learning to Generate Code Provided Examples with Docstrings

Master’s Student Supervision

I have closely supervised 3 master’s students Lars Giling, Sven Bormans, and Catarina Dias de Oliveira who worked on “data-enabled design for cardiac telemonitoring”, “adaptive, context-sensitive smartwatch user interfaces”, and “human digital twins for diabetes management” topics respectively. Below you can find our related publications:

• Lars Giling
  • A Case Study of Data-Enabled Design for Cardiac Telemonitoring | Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2023 (acm.org)
• Sven Bormans & Kang Ling
  • Comparative Evaluation of Touch-Based Input Techniques for Experience Sampling on Smartwatches (accepted, to be published)
• Catarina Dias de Oliveira
  • Exploring the Feasibility of Data-Driven Emotion Modeling for Human Digital Twins | Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (acm.org)

Publications

Below you can find my latest publications related to my PhD research:

• Experiencer: An Open-Source Context-Sensitive Wearable Experience Sampling Tool | SpringerLink
• Simulating Participant Behavior in Experience Sampling Method Research | Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (acm.org)
• IJERPH | Free Full-Text | Assessing the Influence of Physical Activity Upon the Experience Sampling Response Rate on Wrist-Worn Devices (mdpi.com)

For the full list of my publications please visit my Google Scholar page.

Data Science

Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST)

The title of my master’s thesis is “Action Extraction from Social Network Graphs Using Causal Structures to Increase Applicability of Extracted Actions”. You can find its cover page and abstract here.

Teaching Assistant

During my master’s, I was an active member of the data engineering lab and I taught “Advanced databases” and “Search engines and web mining” for 2 consecutive semesters.

Publications

Below you can find my publications w.r.t my research during my Mater’s program:

• Actionable knowledge discovery from social networks using causal structures of structural features – IOS Press
• Extracting Actionable Knowledge From Social Networks Using Structural Features | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

For the full list of my publications please visit my Google Scholar page.

Computer Software Engineering

Urmia University

The title of my bachelor end project is “Location-based Cross-platform Search Engine Application for Local Businesses and Consumers”. You can find its cover page and abstract here.

Certificate of Appreciation

for devoted work at the 7th International Conference on Information and Knowledge Technology, Urmia University, May 26-28, 2015.

GameBus, Eindhoven, Netherlands

During my PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), I was an active member of the GameBus team, an open-access GDPR-oriented gamified mHealth platform that also acts as a data repository.

• As a PhD candidate with software, data & ML engineering skills within our team of 5-10 (PhDs, researchers, student assistants, and developers) we continuously designed and developed new enhancements to GameBus both at the feature and architecture level.
• I have specifically led the ETL & design and development of data streams from smartwatches for continuous data collection and integration with data visualization solutions while also composing advanced queries to visualize derived metrics from complex physiological data structures.
• I was also involved in upgrading the data model underlying the infrastructure specifically for designing surveys and managing external data-providing devices such as smartwatches.
• I led the design and development of an alerting mechanism using a dynamic interoperable pseudo-programming language that accumulates/processes data streams and generates notifications based on stakeholder-defined rules.
• I also set up our independent docker registry to facilitate our containerized micro service architecture.

Dorakk, Remote

Dorakk is an education technology company that provides an online learning and teaching platform focusing on music courses. As a technical advisor, I have been in direct and close contact with the founding team to advise, supervise, and direct:

• Technical personnel recruitment
• Onboarding the technical personnel
• Product design and management
• Forming a roadmap for the data management plan and future AI & ML pathways
• Technology assessment and quality control

Yekom Consulting Engineers, Tehran, Iran

Yekom is a leading multidisciplinary consultancy private firm with 50 years of experience, 400 staff, and about 1000 local and international projects completed so far. Yekom is among the top 5 Iranian consultancy firms in irrigation, water, and environments. I designed, implemented, and maintained:

• Intranet portal,
• Warehouse management,
• Quality control document management,
• And, payroll management

applications (also including ETL, and data engineering) while at Yekom alongside a technical team of 5.

I also supervised interns and led the onboarding and training of our software developers.

Talasho, Tehran, Iran

Talasho was a shopping platform not limited to goods, and in addition to products, it also provided services. Furthermore, by engaging in collaboration in sales, it could act as an executor for advertising high-quality goods. Talasho as an innovative digital business was born in the year 2018 and I was involved from the beginning alongside the founding team.

• Recruited and then managed a talented software team of 4 (including front-end and back-end developers) working on the Talasho platform.

Nullatech AI

Nullatech was a SaaS provider based on big data analysis and machine learning algorithms. We provided analytic and prediction services on massive financial data, customer behavior, fraud detection, and social media mining.

I was heavily involved in the design and development of our algorithm and leading our corresponding team of 5-10 (including data engineers, data scientists, back-end and front-end developers). Besides, I led the technical aspect of work including data and ML engineering (ETL, AutoML, MLOps, DevOps).

TechCrunch Battlefield

We were invited as a top-pick FinTech startup to present our work at the venue in Berlin, Germany in 2018.

TechStars Accelerator

We were qualified for the TechStars accelerator startup acceleration program, London, UK, 2018.

IFIA Award

International Federation of Inventors’ Associations (IFIA) Award for novel AI algorithm design and innovative solution to financial market prediction, Tehran, Iran, 2017.

Startup Istanbul

Nullatech made it to the top 15 finalist startups among 25000 teams from +135 countries, Istanbul, Turkey, 2017.

Entrepreneur In Residence

Our journey started at the Tivan Entrepreneurship Club, then we moved to Samsung AUT Tech, and lastly to Zavié where our IP ultimately merged with another company and the founding team of Nullatech AI made an exit.

Freelance

Designed and implemented various software applications, both individually and within teams of 2-10 developers, including:

• 5 commercial mobile applications
• 10 e-commerce, company, and personal websites
• 10 enterprise Windows desktop applications

I was also responsible for server configuration and administration of most such projects some with >10k daily active users.

Besides, I occasionally advised startups and business owners to build or expand their software development teams.