Professional Experience
Senior Data Analyst · University of Córdoba, Spain
Part time · November 2025–Present
- Lead developer of a spatially explicit modeling tool that assesses native fish extinction risks in the Guadalquivir River basin.
- Integrate empirical datasets on invasive species, dam fragmentation, and climate-driven desiccation.
Senior Development Engineer · Swiss AI, Switzerland
June 2024–August 2025
- Led development of a core agent-based model, achieving a 10x performance increase for product iteration and scenario testing.
- Drove adoption of MLOps practices including CI/CD, versioning, and repeatable validation workflows.
- Established validation protocols and modeling approaches that improved predictive accuracy and business utility.
- Developed internal training and documentation to institutionalize modeling standards across the team.
Developer & Data Steward · Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland
November 2023–June 2024
- Designed, distributed, and analyzed a survey across 40 large European research institutes.
- Delivered a SWOT analysis of regulations and practices for achieving FAIR data principles.
- Improved the PSI science catalogue application.
Senior Lecturer · University of Zurich, Switzerland
August 2020–July 2023
- Designed and executed research initiatives that modeled complex dynamic systems with sparse data to predict outcomes and identify key drivers of change.
- Partnered with domain experts to turn ambiguous research questions into testable hypotheses and decision-relevant findings.
- Developed and taught a graduate-level machine learning course for four years.
Modeling Consultant · University of Madeira & IBS Center for Climate Physics
2021–2022
- Partnered with international teams to define requirements and deliver predictive models for ecosystem dynamics and human migration.
- Engineered a cloud-based simulation framework that scaled across 1,000+ compute nodes, reducing analysis runtime from weeks to hours.
- Delivered production-ready modeling tools with 90% test coverage.
Postdoctoral Researcher · University of Zurich, Switzerland
August 2017–July 2020
- Used statistical tools and machine learning techniques to analyze models and data concerning ancient human dispersals.
Education
PhD in Evolutionary Biology · University of Zurich
2012–2017
Thesis: Genotype networks: convergent evolution, population size and adaptation.
MSc in Evolutionary Biology and Genomics · University of Manchester
2010–2011
Thesis: Analysis of replication timing on genetic variation in the human genome.
BSc in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Genetics · Azad University Tonekabon
2006–2010
Languages
- English: C2
- German: B2
- Persian: Native
Technical Focus
- Data science & ML: Statistical modeling, supervised and unsupervised learning, experimental design, causal inference, optimization, hypothesis testing, data mining, geospatial analytics, and visualization.
- LLM & AI: RAG implementation, prompt engineering, structured output generation, and LLM-powered assistants.
- Technical stack: Python, Julia, R, SQL, Docker, Git/CI/CD, HPC, parallel and distributed processing, reproducible programming, unit testing, and code review.
- Leadership: Project management, technical writing, teaching, mentorship, presentations, grant and manuscript preparation, and cross-functional problem solving.