Elham Nasarian
Blacksburg,VA
Summary
Dedicated and adaptable professional with a proactive attitude and the ability to learn quickly. Strong work ethic and effective communication skills. Eager to contribute to a dynamic team and support organizational goals.
Overview
14
14
years of professional experience
Work History
Ph.D. Researcher (Responsible AI)
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, USA
01.2022 - Current
- Company Overview: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
- Developing a three-level interpretability ML system for Opioid-Induced Respiratory Depression (OIRD) risk prediction; monitoring model performance (Accuracy, F1, Precision, Recall) to ensure trustworthy, transparent, and ethical AI systems.
- Leading cross-functional teams across medical experts, engineers, and researchers to build a user-friendly risk score tool with statistical analysis, machine learning, and medical expertise to translate complex AI risks into actionable and understandable insights in collaboration with Carilion Clinic.
- Generating synthetic time-series data; using advanced Generative AI techniques like GANs; measuring similarity between synthetic and real data by signal processing methods and visualization tools to ensure clinical accuracy and signal quality.
- Assessing the accuracy and reliability of medical LLMs to examine how well they avoid false or misleading answers after fine-tuning with human feedback (SFT/RLHF); using evaluation metrics like the False Confidence Test (FCT), Fake Question Test (FQT), and None-of-the-Above (NOTA) to detect and analyze model errors.
- Teaching experience: Instructor for Industrial Cost Control (ISE3004), TA for Probability & Statistics, Statistical Quality Control, Discrete-Event Simulation, Facilities and Logistics, Discrete Event Simulation.
- Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
AI Scientist Intern (Applied)
Walkky
Boston, USA
01.2025 - 04.2025
- Company Overview: Walkky, Boston, MA
- Applied time-series data augmentation methods like β-VAE and GANs for synthetic ECG generation using large-scale, noisy signals.
- Handled noise through filtering and normalization, and evaluated signal quality by measuring similarity between synthetic and real data using signal processing techniques.
- Walkky, Boston, MA
Lead Research Scientist (Applied)
Abadan Clinic
Abadan, Khuzestan
01.2016 - 01.2021
- Company Overview: R&D Department, Abadan Clinic, Abadan, Khuzestan
- Collected and curated a novel heart disease dataset from electronic and physical medical records of angiography patients, integrating behavioral and occupational risk factors (e.g., irregular sleep, stress; 54 features total); published in the UCI Machine Learning Repository.
- Led cross-functional teams of medical experts, researchers, and data scientists to develop predictive models for coronary artery disease (CAD) using deep learning (DNN, CNN) and classical ML techniques; applied models to real and synthetic data to address small and imbalanced datasets.
- Achieved 95.4% accuracy through data augmentation; validated performance using sensitivity and specificity to ensure reliable and clinically meaningful predictions.
- R&D Department, Abadan Clinic, Abadan, Khuzestan
Senior Research Data Scientist
Technical Training Institute
Abadan, Khuzestan
01.2012 - 01.2021
- Company Overview: Technical Training Institute, Abadan, Khuzestan
- Led data-driven analysis and A/B testing on large-scale employee surveys (n > 5,000) to identify root causes and biases of training dissatisfaction and optimize instructional strategies.
- Directed 10+ cross-functional teams (engineers, IT specialists, instructors, managers) to design, launch, and maintain e-learning programs, successfully trained 1,000+ users across the organization.
- Actively tracked and reduced training costs by 48% while expanding equitable access; delivered executive ready insights for strategic decisions and grant reporting.
- Technical Training Institute, Abadan, Khuzestan
Education
Ph.D. - Industrial & Systems Engineering
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA10-2025
M.S. - Industrial Engineering
Islamic Azad University
Najafabad, Isfahan09-2017
Skills
Responsible AI
- Machine learning
- Data analysis
Awards
- Paul E. Torgersen Research Excellence Award, Virginia Tech, College of Engineering, 01/01/24
- GPSS Graduate Research Symposium Award, Virginia Tech, Graduate School, 01/01/25
Publications
- Enhancing Clinician-AI-Interaction for Monitoring Severe Health Outcome, Upcoming INFORMS annual meeting, 10/01/25
- CAIM-OIRD Risk Tool: Enhancing Clinician-AI-Interaction for Monitoring Opioid-Induced Respiratory Depression, under revision
- Designing interpretable ML system to enhance trust in healthcare, Information Fusion, 108, 2024, 102412
- Responsible Clinician-AI-Collaboration Framework to build Trustworthiness AI in Health Systems, INFORMS annual meeting, 10/01/24
- AI Framework for Early Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease, IISE 2023 Conference, 05/01/23
- Association between work‑related features and coronary artery disease, Pattern Recognition Letters, 133, 2020, 33-40
Websites
- https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/557/nasarian+cad+dataset
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=kFpCLcsAAAAJ&citation_for_view=kFpCLcsAAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=kFpCLcsAAAAJ&citation_for_view=kFpCLcsAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C
Reviewer For Journals
- Information Fusion
- Mayo Clinic Proceedings
- ACM Transactions on Digital Health
Leadership Experience
- Guest Lecturer, AI/ML Success Stories in Healthcare, Fall 2024
- Graduate Honor System Panelist, Virginia Tech Graduate School
- Graduate Panelist, Virginia Tech Grado Department of Industrial & System Engineering
- Judge, 2023 Poster Competition at the Undergraduate Research Symposium, Virginia Tech Grado Department of Industrial & System Engineering
Timeline
AI Scientist Intern (Applied)
Walkky
01.2025 - 04.2025
Ph.D. Researcher (Responsible AI)
Virginia Tech
01.2022 - Current
Lead Research Scientist (Applied)
Abadan Clinic
01.2016 - 01.2021
Senior Research Data Scientist
Technical Training Institute
01.2012 - 01.2021
Ph.D. - Industrial & Systems Engineering
Virginia Tech
M.S. - Industrial Engineering
Islamic Azad University