WebConf2026
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About Me
I'm Baktash Ansari, a Computer Science researcher beginning my PhD at Michigan State University (2026), after completing my MS at the University of Washington with a perfect 4.0 GPA and my BS at Iran University of Science & Technology, where I ranked #1 in my department.
My work sits at the intersection of natural language processing, vision-language modeling, and information retrieval. I'm fascinated by how large language models reason — their theory-of-mind, their blind spots on visual illusions, and how retrieval can make them more grounded and trustworthy.
I've published at venues including CVPR, NeurIPS, NAACL (SemEval), and The Web Conference, and I love building things — from multi-GPU training pipelines to full-stack web apps.
Research Interests
- Natural Language Processing
- Vision-Language Modeling
- Information Retrieval
- Medical Imaging
- LLM Reasoning & Theory of Mind
- Neuro-Symbolic AI
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Education & Journey
Aug 2026 — 2031
PhD, Computer Science & Engineering
Michigan State University · East Lansing, MI
Incoming PhD researcher in machine learning and reasoning systems.
Sep 2025 — Present
MS, Computer Science GPA 4.0
University of Washington · Bothell, WA
Specialization in AI + Machine Learning. Graduate Research Assistant working on retrieval & LLM reasoning.
Oct 2020 — Jul 2024
BS, Computer Engineering GPA 3.92 · Rank #1
Iran University of Science & Technology · Tehran
Top student of the department among 102 peers. Specialization in AI + Machine Learning.
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Research Experience
Graduate Research Assistant
Sep 2025 — PresentUniversity of Washington · Bothell, WA
- Fine-tuned retrieval models (Contriever) with TopicTune, boosting Llama & GPT accuracy on open-domain Reddit/Lemmy data by 10%.
- Applied reinforcement learning with LLM feedback for retrieval optimization and generation.
- Implemented prompt-tuning on DeepSeek & Llama for toxicity detection in Twitch chat.
- Built multi-GPU PyTorch pipelines for inference, analysis & evaluation.
Research Assistant
Aug 2025 — PresentMichigan State University · Remote
- Designed a Neuro-Symbolic Agentic Pipeline integrating symbolic reasoning with LLMs for abductive reasoning on complex visual datasets.
- Trained CLIP models with contrastive learning for visual-text alignment.
Research Assistant
Jul 2023 — Aug 2024Iran University of Science & Technology · Tehran
- Built 3 pipelines (Multi-Agent Debate, Chain-of-Thought, Fine-tuning) for SemEval-2024 Task 9, reaching 85% accuracy.
- Developed sexism-detection methods — 4th in Task 1, 2nd in Task 2 at CLEF 2024 EXIST.
- Generated 4 image datasets (4,000+ samples each) with Stable Diffusion to benchmark multimodal models (GPT-4o, Gemini, CLIP, BLIP).
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Selected Projects
Hamming Embedding Image Search
Bag-of-Features with Hamming Embedding & Weak Geometric Consistency in C++. Achieved 63.46% mAP on Oxford — a 31% lift over baseline BoF.
Movie Revenue Prediction
End-to-end ML pipeline with 60+ engineered features across 17 models. Best: Extra Trees (R²=0.738), beating XGBoost & deep nets.
Persian Emotion Detection
Fine-tuned ParsBERT & XLM-RoBERTa Large on ArmanEmo; published models on Hugging Face. Multimodal classification with MVSA + ResNet.
BAMO @ SemEval 2024
Led the team on lateral-thinking reasoning: fine-tuned transformers, chain-of-thought prompting, and multi-agent debate (ReConcile).
Fuzzy Pendulum Control
Top-performing fuzzy control system for inverted-pendulum stabilization in a Computational Intelligence course.
TrekDestiny — Travel Platform
Led 3 devs building a travel web app with auth, real-time chat, notifications & blog. React + Tailwind, Scrum, CI/CD.
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Technical Skills
Languages
ML / AI
Tools & Data
Honors
Top Student — Computer Engineering
Ranked #1 of 102 students at IUST · 2024
National Entrance Exam (Konkur)
Ranked 523rd — top 0.3% of 155,000+ · 2020
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Let's Connect
Open to research collaborations, PhD discussions, and interesting problems in NLP, vision-language modeling, and retrieval.
[email protected]