Zahra Zamani

I am a PhD student at the Artificial Intelligence Group of The Australian National University (ANU) and a researcher at the Machine Learning Research Group at National ICT of Australia (NICTA)

Research Interests Planning under uncertainty, Sequential Decision Theory, Discrete and Continuous Optimization Symbolic representation and reasoning, Logic (higher-order and first-order) in AI, Agent frameworks Machine Learning, Graphical models PhD Project I am working on exact solution methods to sequential decision making in continuous domains. I use a symbolic approach on continuous MDPs and POMDPs. My research is explained (non-mathematically!) here.

Publications

• Zamani Z., Sanner S., Delgado K.V., Nunes de Barros L., Exact Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Continuous State and Action MDPs, Submitted to Journal of Artificial Intelligence Reseach (JAIR).
• Sanner S., Zamani Z., Recent advances in Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Hybrid MDPs and POMDPs, To appear in European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL11), Dagstuhl,Germany, August 2013.
• Zamani Z., Sanner S., Delgado K.V., Nunes de Barros L., Robust Optimization for Hybrid MDPs with State-dependent Noise, To appear in International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI13), Beijing, China August 2013.
• Zamani Z., Sanner S., Poupart P., Kersting K., Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Continuous State and Observation POMDPs, In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS-12), Lake Tahoe, USA, 2012. [pdf][link]
• Zamani Z. , Sanner S., Fang C., “Symbolic Dynamic Programming for Continuous State and Action MDPs”, In Proceedings of the 26^th conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-12), Toronto, Canada, 2012. [pdf][link]
• Zamani Z., An agent architecture for structured uncertain environments, Technical report, AI group, ANU, 2010. [pdf]
• Zamani Z., HajiHosseini A., Masoudinejad A., "Computational Methodology for Analyzing, Modeling and Controlling Gene Regulatory Networks", Biomedical Engineering and Computational Biology Journal, October 2010. [pdf] [link]
• Zamani Z., Bayat M., Moeini A., Motevallian A., "Context-Aware Payment for Supply Chains: Software Architecture and Formal Verification", In Proceeding of World Congress on Engineering, London, July 2008. [pdf] [link]

Education

PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Research School of Computer Science, The Australian National University and NICTA (Sept 2009 – Nov 2013)

Thesis: Symbolic Sequential Decision making in continuous Markov Decision Processes

Supervisors: Prof. John Lloyd, Dr. Scott Sanner ,Dr. Kee Siong Ng.

Courses: Data mining algorithm, Machine Learning, Planning in AI.

M.S. in Computer Engineering, Algorithms and Computation, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. (2007-2009). GPA:18.5/20 Thesis 20/20

Thesis: A general Formal Multi-agent Framework for Supply Chains and Gene Networks (20/20) GPA: 18.9 / 20.

Supervisor: Dr. M. Moeini

Courses: Optimization Algorithms, Computational complexity theory, Distributed AI( Multi-agent systems), First-order and Temporal Logic, Evolutionary computing, Algorithms for Bioinformatics.

B.S. in Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. (2001-2005).GPA: 15.92/20 Thesis :19.5/20

Thesis: Design and Implementation of Patient Information Management Software using the HL7 Standard

Work and Teaching Experience

• ANU Student Mentor for Computer Science PhD students, 2011-2012.
• Artificial Intelligence Course (BS and MS) Tutor and Lab Instructor, Computer Science and Information Technology Department, ANU, 2011.
• Programming with C++ Tutor and Lab instructor, School of Engineering, University of Tehran, 2008-2009.
• Differential Equations Tutor, School of Engineering, University of Tehran, 2008
• .NET developer at National TV (2008-2009) Analysis, Modelling and development of the archive system
• Java developer for Iran Switch Management Network, 2006-2007
• Software analyst and designer of the Fault Localization and Correction system of project, 2005-2006
• UML Lecturer, Amirkabir University, Tehran, Iran (2006)

Honors and Awards

• ANU Vice-Chancellor Travel Grant, 2011 ($1500).
• ANU-NICTA Tuition Scholarship, 2009.
• ANU-NICTA Supplementary Scholarship, 2009.
• ANU-NICTA PhD Admission, 2009.
• Ranked 1^st in cumulative GPA among M.Sc. students of the major 2007 Beginners, University of Tehran, 2007.

Contact details

Email: zahra dot zamani AT anu.edu.au , zahra dot zamani AT nicta.com.au

Office: 02 6267 6296

Address: PO Box 8001, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia