Sepehr Karimi

Sepehr Karimi

PhD Student, AI Researcher, ML engineer

Sepehr Karimi

About Me

I am a Machine Learning and AI researcher currently pursuing my PhD at the Adelaide University, Australia, under the supervision of Dr. Ali Pourmousavi Kani. My research focuses on developing unified, data-driven frameworks for electricity price forecasting and battery energy storage system (BESS) operation in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM).

Before starting my PhD, I completed my Master’s degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Tehran. My background spans Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Social Network Analysis. As a researcher at the NLP Lab, I contributed to several projects involving domain-specific question answering, LLM-based conversational agents, and multilingual chatbot systems for low-resource languages.

I have also collaborated with research groups at Columbia University and Nottingham Trent University on projects involving clinical NLP, EEG-based disease detection, and multimodal deep learning, resulting in multiple publications in applied machine learning and healthcare.

My broader research interests include:

  • price forecasting & energy market analytics
  • Time-series modeling and decision-making under uncertainty
  • NLP and multimodal deep learning

I aim to bridge machine learning, optimization, and real-world energy systems to enable more efficient, reliable, and sustainable grid operations.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Adelaide (2025 – Present)
  • M.Sc. in Computer Engineering, University of Tehran (2021 – 2024)
  • B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology – Tehran Polytechnic (2016 – 2021)

Recent News

SofiaMind’s First Client

Published:

A significant milestone for SofiaMind was securing our first major client, the University of Tehran, in March 2024. We successfully deployed a chatbot system to handle various university services, from answering student inquiries to assisting with administrative tasks.

Research Assistantship at Nottingham Trent University

Published:

In March 2024, I joined Nottingham Trent University as a remote Research Assistant, working under the guidance of David Brown, Mufti Mahmud, Alexander Sumich, and Nadja Heym. Our project involves conducting a systematic review of deep learning approaches on EEG data for the early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI).

Research Assistantship at Columbia University

Published:

Starting in January 2024, I joined Columbia University as a remote Research Assistant under the mentorship of Dr. Maryam Zolnoori. Our research focuses on leveraging large language models (LLMs) for clinical decision support, with the ultimate goal of developing real-time diagnostic tools for healthcare.

Starting SofiaMind

Published:

Starting a company has always been a dream of mine, and in September 2023, I co-founded SofiaMind with a few talented students at University of Tehran. Our vision was to create intelligent chatbots leveraging state-of-the-art AI technologies such as large language models (LLMs) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

Professional Experience

  • Data Scientist & Backend Engineer, OptiGrid Pty Ltd (October 2023 – Present)
    • Building machine learning pipelines for electricity price forecasting, energy optimization, and battery bidding strategies.
    • Developing backend systems and APIs for scalable, data-driven energy analytics.
  • Co-Founder & AI Engineer, SofiaMind (September 2023 – Present)
    • Developing LLM-powered chatbots and RAG-based conversational systems.
    • Focused on multilingual and domain-specific dialogue models.

Selected Publications

For a complete list of my papers, visit my Google Scholar.

  • Speech-Based Cognitive Screening: A Systematic Evaluation of LLM Adaptation Strategies
    Fatemeh Taherinezhad, Mohamad Javad Momeni Nezhad, Sepehr Karimi, Sina Rashidi, Ali Zolnouri, Maryam Dadkhah, Yasaman Haghbin, Hossein AzadMaleki, Maryam Zolnoori
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.03525, 2025.
    🔗 https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03525

  • PersianMedQA: Language-Centric Evaluation of LLMs in the Persian Medical Domain
    Mohammad Javad Ranjbar Kalahroodi, Sepehr Karimi, Amirhossein Sheikholselami, Sepideh Ranjbar Kalahroodi, Heshaam Faili, Azadeh Shakery
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.00250, 2025.
    🔗 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00250

  • Deep Learning Approaches in EEG Analysis for Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Mini Systematic Review
    Tahoura Morovati, Hamed Vaezi, Sepehr Karimi, Md Mahmud, Michael Crook-Rumsey, Nicky Heym, et al.
    *International Conference on Applied Intelligence and Informatics    , pp. 63–81, 2024.
    🔗 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-04657-4_5

Contact

Feel free to reach out via email or explore my work on GitHub.