Hello, and thank you for visiting my portfolio!
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Computer Science at McGill University and Mila Quebec AI Institute, working with Dr. Jackie Cheung at the Natural Language Processing Research Group and Dr. Jin Guo at the Software Technology Lab. I am also a member of the core writing team for the International AI Safety Report and Executive Director of the Open Roboethics Institute.
I am passionate about doing interdisciplinary research. My research interests sit at the intersection of system safety, human-computer interaction, and the societal impact of AI and robotics. I focus on questions such as:
- How AI and robotics shape and mediate the way we communicate, create, and work
- How technology developers can be more thoughtful and systematic in assessing potential risks from AI systems
I’m currently supported by the CIFAR AI Safety Postdoctoral Fellowship and the IVADO Postdoctoral Fellowship, which fund two projects: one on designing system-level measures for AI safety, and another on developing practical frameworks for human oversight in complex AI collaborations.
I completed my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Dr. AJung Moon at McGill and Mila, supported by the NSERC Doctoral CGS and Vadesz Scholarship. My Ph.D. thesis focused on translating system safety frameworks for AI systems. I earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (Mechatronics) and a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of British Columbia.
Besides my research, I love to dance, choreograph, and perform. I have founded and co-led an Azerbaijani folk dance company for 15 years of my life. Being a dancer has taught me the importance of human connection, and it is one of the main reasons I feel strongly about ensuring that we examine the societal impacts of technologies that are disrupting how we connect to ourselves and each other.
I love learning about different cultures and travelling. I speak three languages (English, Farsi, and Azerbaijani/Turkish fluently) and have attempted to learn French, Spanish, German, and Mandarin at different points in my life with varying levels of success.
News!
- February 11, 2026: Presented When is a Human Actually ‘Overseeing’ an AI System? at the University of Toronto AI Safety Meeting.
- January 19, 2026: Presented Examining Meaningful Control: Navigating Oversight and Agency with the Use of AI Systems at the CIFAR AI Postdoctoral Fellows Meeting.
- December 1, 2025: Delivered a talk at ML Commons Endpoint on Safety is a Systems Problem: Understanding and Evaluating AI in Context.
- November 11, 2025: Delivered guest lecture on Measuring What Matters: Connecting AI Ethics Evaluations to System Attributes, Hazards, and Harms at the Sociotechnical Evaluation Course taught by Dr. Fernando Diaz and Dr. Hoda Heidari at Carnegie Melon University.
- November 4, 2025: Perfomed Confined Spaces, Boundless Movements (a contemporary folk dance that I co-directed) for the first time to a sold-out crowd in Annex Theatre of Vancouver, Canada.
- October 20-22, 2025: Attended and presented at the AIES 2025 conference in Madrid, Spain. Our Measuring What Matters paper won one of the best paper awards!
- October 9, 2025: Hosted From Dialogue to Design: Co-Creating a Toolkit for Ethical Robotics Integration in the Workforce roundtable at the Canadian Robotics Council Symposium in Kingston, Ontario.
- October 3, 2025: Attended the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI) Research Program Annual Meeting in Toronto as part of the CIFAR AI Safety Postdoctoral Fellow cohort.
- September 25, 2025: Presented the From Silos to Systems paper at the STAMP 2025 workshop.
- August 15, 2025: Submitted my final Ph.D. thesis!
- August 12, 2025: Defended my Ph.D. thesis at McGill University and successfully passed!