Meet the Faculty

Dr. Bethany Edmunds is a recognized leader in Computer Science and STEM education in North America. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence, and is currently the Associate Director of Network Programs, and Director of Computing Programs at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus. Bethany is passionate about breaking down barriers to create greater diversity, access and inclusivity within the technology community. She brings together expertise in software development, machine learning, and educational innovation to create STEM opportunities for people of all backgrounds and abilities.

Bethany’s commitment to breaking ground in tech education began early. While earning her Ph.D. in Machine Learning at Rutgers University in her native New Jersey, she was the co-organizer for the second international Women in Machine Learning Workshop. She continues to actively encourage women and girls to pursue careers in tech, speaking regularly at women in technology events. She is also currently on the Board of Directors for Women in Machine Learning.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Bethany was the first female Associate Dean of Computing at British Columbia Institute of Technology where she led the pedagogical innovation of the Computer Information Technology Program. Her industry experience includes developing flight simulation software while working for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the government body that oversees all aspects of civil aviation in the United States.

Dr. Edmunds has been named one of BC Business's Most Influential Women in STEM, Business in Vancouver's Forty under 40, and YWCA’s Women of Distinction. She is a broadly published researcher, and sought after media expert on the subject of improving diversity in STEM education.

Education:
• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning specialization, Rutgers University
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Rowan University

Research Interests:
• Generalized reinforcement learning for mobile robotics

Awards and Recognition:
• YWCA Metro Vancouver Women of Distinction Award, Education, Training, and Development, 2019
• Business in Vancouver, Top Forty under 40, 2018
• BC’s Most Influential Women, BC Business Magazine, 2018
• Brian Thom Advancing Teaching Excellence Award, 2016
• National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Fellowship, 2006 - 2008

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Ildar Akhmetov is the director of computing programs for Vancouver and an associate teaching professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Vancouver.

Throughout his career, Akhmetov has worn three hats. As a university educator, he spent more than a decade in his native Russia before jumping to the University of Alberta. There, he continued to design and teach undergraduate and graduate courses, with an emphasis on forging partnerships to facilitate hands-on, experiential projects for his students. As an entrepreneur, he founded and managed several businesses. And as a software developer, he has overseen the development, integration, maintenance, and security of IT and computer systems.

Akhmetov was drawn to Khoury College by the opportunity to contribute to the Align program, the college’s “CS for everyone” mission, and Northeastern’s culture of innovation. In Vancouver, the veteran professor aims to connect with local companies and organizations, leveraging his entrepreneurial experience to launch his students into industry. In the classroom, he feels inspired by the unique perspectives and impact of the graduate students who transition into computing, and he relishes the opportunity to set the stage for these students’ successes.

Outside of teaching, Akhmetov keeps both a busy travel itinerary — having been to more than 30 countries — and a regular distance running regimen, having finished the prestigious Chicago Marathon. Since 1998, he has learned a new programming language each year.

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Logan Schmidt (he/him) is an assistant teaching professor and assistant director of computing programs at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University in Vancouver. He teaches computer science courses and aims to introduce newcomers in the field to computer science fundamentals and concepts that will help them build careers, adapt to changing technologies and new situations, and launch themselves into challenging new projects. He also teaches courses related to security and privacy.

Dr. Schmidt's research interests include investigating the privacy impacts of new devices and tools, as well as evaluating the efficacy of interventions in computer science education, particularly at the curricular level. Dr. Schmidt received his doctorate in rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University, where he researched the effective communication of technical and scientific information to lay audiences. He is proud to be a product of Khoury’s own Align program, and he is committed to the mission of CS for All.

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Mario Nascimento is the director of Pacific Northwest Research at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus. He received his bachelor’s in applied mathematics from State University of Campinas in Brazil, his master’s in electrical engineering from State University of Campinas in Brazil, and his PhD in Computer Science from Southern Methodist University. Nascimento is research active in the field of data science, specifically spatiotemporal databases.

Prior to joining Northeastern, he was a faculty member with the University of Alberta’s Department of Computing Science for over 23 years (including 6 as the Department’s Chair), a researcher with the Brazilian Agency for Agricultural Research, and an adjunct faculty member with the Institute of Computing of the University of Campinas. Nascimento has also been a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s School of Computing, Aalborg University’s Department of Computer Science in Denmark, LMU’s Institute for Informatics in Germany, and the Federal University of Ceara in Brazil.

Education:

● PhD in Computer Science, Southern Methodist University
● MS in Electrical Engineering, State University of Campinas, Brazil
● BS in Applied Mathematics, State University of Campinas, Brazil

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Juancho Buchanan is a professor of practice at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. He earned his bachelor’s in computer science from the University of Windsor, master’s in computer science from the University of Toronto, and PhD in computer science from the University of British Columbia.

His areas of teaching focus on computer graphs and the foundations of software engineering.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Buchanan worked as the vice president of engineering at Staffbase, the manager of engineers for Amazon web services, the director of core technology for Hothead Games, a software development manager for Amazon, and more. He is also currently the senior director of software engineering at Bananatag.

In his free time, he focuses on building a pipeline to generate and 3D print stained glass windows.

Education:
● PhD in Computer Science, University of British Columbia
● MS in Computer Science, University of Toronto
● BS in Computer Science, University of Windsor

Research Interests:
● Computer graphics
● 3D printing
● Practice of software engineering

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(he/him)

Lino is an engineer, educator and researcher working in computer vision applications. Lino has over fifteen years of experience working in both industry and academia.

Lino has conducted research in the fields of image processing and computer vision. He has published multiple papers in topics such as blind signal separation, digital image and video watermarking, high dynamic range imaging, stereoscopic video, and 3D quality of experience.

For over six years, he was a Professor at ITESO University in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Additionally, he has taught several courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of British Columbia, Langara College, and CINVESTAV (Mexico).

For the past nine years, Lino has worked as an engineer at several Vancouver startups developing computer vision algorithms and machine learning models for a variety of applications, including online video and metadata optimization, custom footwear design, and agricultural technology.

Lino is a member of the Society for Canadian Women in Science & Technology (SCWIST) and has volunteered as a mentor with the Immigrant Employment Council of BC (IEC-BC) since 2016.

Education:
• M.Eng., Electrical Engineering, McMaster University
• Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Research Interests:
• Computer Vision
• Image Processing

[email protected]

(he/him)

Richard Hoshino is an Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern University in Vancouver. He was previously a mathematician for the Government of Canada, a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, and most recently a professor of mathematics and computer science at Quest University Canada in Squamish, British Columbia. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Richard has published 35 research papers across numerous fields, including graph theory, biometric identification, sports tournament scheduling, and optimal school timetabling. He has consulted for a billion-dollar professional baseball league and three Canadian TV game shows.

Richard has presented at the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) six times in the past decade, winning their Deployed Application Award twice. His work for the Canada Border Services Agency included helping reduce wait times at Canadian border crossings as well as creating risk scoring algorithms for marine cargo containers.

Richard is also heavily involved in community outreach, and has visited over 50 high schools, conducting workshops on problem-solving and computational thinking for thousands of students and teachers. He was the 2017 recipient of the Adrien Pouliot Award, awarded by the Canadian Mathematical Society as a lifetime achievement award to celebrate “significant and sustained contributions to mathematics education.” He is also the author of the novel “The Math Olympian,” currently ranked #1 by GoodReads for Best Young Adult Books that Empower.

Education
• Ph.D. Math, Dalhousie University
• M.Sc., Dalhousie University
• B.Math, University of Waterloo
• B.Ed, Queen’s University

Research Interests
• Scheduling Optimization
• Operations Research
• Mathematics Pedagogy

Awards and Recognition
• Adrien Pouliot Award, Canadian Mathematical Society, 2017
• Action Canada Fellowship, 2003
• Silver Medallist, International Mathematical Olympiad, 1996

Selected Publications
• R. Hoshino and I. Fabris, Optimizing Student Course Preferences in School Timetabling, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research (CPAIOR 2020), Vienna, Austria, May 2020.
• R. Hoshino and M. Notarangelo, Computational Intractability and Solvability for the Birds of a Feather Game, Proceedings of the 9th EAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (EAAI 2019), Honolulu, Hawaii, January 2019.
• R. Hoshino, A. Slobodin, and W. Bernoudy, An Automated Employee Timetabling System for Small Businesses, Proceedings of the 30th IAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2018), New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2018. Winner of the Deployed Application Award.
• R. Hoshino and J. Beairsto, Optimal Pricing for Distance-Based Transit Fares, Proceedings of the 30th IAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2018), New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2018.
• R. Hoshino and C. Raible-Clark, The Quest Draft: an Automated Course Allocation Algorithm, Proceedings of the 26th IAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2014), Quebec City, Quebec, July 2014. Winner of the Deployed Application Award.

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Ernesto Peña, PhD, is an Associate Teaching Professor and the Coordinator of the Master of Science in Information Design and Data Visualization in Vancouver. Ernesto’s collective teaching experience spans over 20 years, encompassing Mexico, his home country, and Canada, where he has lived and worked since 2012. Both his scholarship and teaching approach emphasize interdisciplinary perspectives and knowledge mobilization. Ernesto’s academic work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Visual Literacy, Visible Language, Leonardo, Design Issues, InfoDesign, and Convergence. His research interests include, but are not limited to, Digital Humanities, Semiotics, Transmediation, and Glitch.

Before joining CAMD/Northeastern University, Ernesto served as Director of Research for a Vancouver-based financial technology startup and was an Adjunct Professor in the Masters in Educational Technology program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Before joining Northeastern, she served as department chair of Graphic Design at MICA in Baltimore. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center.

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Hazra Imran works to blend technology and psychology into impactful learning experiences that cater to students of all backgrounds. She believes in games’ unique ability to motivate students, promote deep engagement, and enable knowledge retention, and she is particularly interested in how AI-powered metrics can integrate with large language models to enhance social and emotional learning. She’ll apply those educational philosophies in Vancouver, where she teaches courses in foundational computer science and web development and conducts further research into technologically supported learning.

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(he/him)

Dr. Aanchan Mohan is an assistant teaching professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences in Vancouver. Dr. Mohan’s areas of teaching are machine learning, natural language processing, and speech recognition.

Along with his role at Northeastern, Dr. Mohan is a lead data scientist at Global Relay–a provider of compliant electronic communications archiving, messaging, supervision, information governance, and eDiscovery. He is also currently a research faculty member at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology in New Delhi, India. Until 2021, Dr. Mohan was the director of technology at Synaptitude Brain Health, where he assembled and managed a team to build a product that delivered brain health assessment and coaching. Dr. Mohan has held various research scientist roles at Mio Global, Malaspina Labs, and Nuance–all based in Canada. In 2015, he received his doctorate from McGill University in Montreal, Canada where he focused on multi-lingual speech recognition and transfer learning

Dr. Mohan is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is a reviewer for IEEE Signal Processing Letters, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, ISCA Speech Communication Journal, IEEE ICASSP Conferences, and ISCA Interspeech Conferences. Mohan is an instructor of machine learning for Canada Learning Code, a co-organizer for the PyData and Learn Data Science groups in Vancouver, and a founding member of MTLData–a community of machine learning enthusiasts in Montreal. Dr. Mohan has presented his research internationally and holds many patents.

Beyond work, Dr. Mohan loves playing the guitar, enjoys tennis, and is passionate about computer science education.

Education:
• PhD, McGill University
• MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University

Research Interests
• Machine learning
• Natural language processing
• Speech recognition

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Mirjana Prpa brings an interdisciplinary perspective to solving complex problems of designing technology at the intersection of Mixed Reality and Human-computer Interaction. She applies her research and leadership experience in building the future of Immersive technologies (XR) from the human-centered perspective that amplifies ethical and just ways of designing new technologies

Mirjana’s work in VR has received international attention through the exhibition at the Olympics in Brazil in 2016, and Leonardo journal award as an emerging talent in art, science and technology in 2018. Her research efforts towards expanding the UX research methods to capture more complex accounts of user experiences was awarded with Best Paper award at CHI’20. At Northeastern she continues to pursue research at the intersection of art, science and technology.

Mirjana obtained Ph.D. from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, at Simon Fraser University. She is an Assistant Professor at Khoury College of Computer Science, Northeastern University, and has previously led AR Portfolio as Product Manager and Head of AI division at Nextech AR Solutions.

Education:
● PhD, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Canada
● MARch, BArch, University of Novi Sad, Serbia:

Research Interests:

● Human-computer Interaction
● Mixed Reality
● Generative AI

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The popularity and accessibility of Android applications makes them prime targets for malware, so Maryam Tanha is using machine learning to detect that malware and improve mobile security. After graduating with her doctorate from the University of Victoria, she joined the British Columbia Institute of Technology, where she received a grant to research Android malware detection and to mentor undergraduate students also interested in that area. Tanha began lecturing with Khoury College part time in 2023, and — excited by the opportunity to engage with master’s students — she will join Khoury College full-time in the spring.

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Ryan M. Rad is an assistant teaching professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University in Vancouver.

Education:
● PhD in Applied Sciences, Simon Fraser University — Canada
● MS in Computer Science, University of Malaya — Malaysia
● BE in Computer Engineering, University of Guilan — Iran

Research Interests:
● Machine learning
● Computer vision
● Generative models
● Data science

Awards and Recognition:
He has published more than 20 scientific papers with more than 500 citations, and an i10-index of 15. He served as a technical committee member or speaker for several top-tier computer science journals and conferences including IEEE TIP, IEEE TMI, ICCV, ICIP, VCIP, AAAI, and MICCAI.

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(he/him)

Jack Thomas is an assistant teaching professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University.

Education:
• Ph.D. in Computing Science, Simon Fraser University — Canada
• MMath in Computer Science, University of Waterloo — Canada
• BCS in Computer Science, University of New Brunswick — Canada
• BA in Philosophy, University of New Brunswick — Canada

Research Interests:
• Robotics

Awards and Recognition
Thomas has been published in the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and the 2018 and 2019 EEE/RSJ International Conferences on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Nabeel is an Assistant Professor of Design and Data Analysis jointly appointed with the D’Amore-McKim School of Business and the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University. His research interests involve using tools from computation and design to foster pluralism—an inclusive response to diversity in society—in ways that promote educational, economic, and social inclusion. More specifically, he seeks to apply methods from machine learning, data science, and design to build bridges across segregated spaces like: 1) echo chambers and empathy gaps on social media, and 2) educational inequalities stemming from segregated schools and neighborhoods. Read more about his research on his group’s webpage: pluralconnections.org.

Nabeel received his PhD from the MIT Media Lab. Prior to graduate school, he worked on the product and analytics teams at Khan Academy. He studied Applied Math and Computer Science at Brown University as an undergrad, and received master’s degrees in Education and Machine Learning at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

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Education:
● Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Canada

Professional Experience:
● Software Engineer and Professional Researcher

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Yvonne Coady is a visiting professor of computer science at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. She is also a computer science professor at the University of Victoria and serves as an adjunct professor at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver. Coady works with Indigenous community members to develop software learning tools and platforms for improved access to remote education.

Coady’s research changes the way software developers and users utilize the collaborative medium that is the World Wide Web. She believes that the power to harness the power of cloud computing is on the horizon. Her ultimate goal is to take the enormous computing power that used to only be accessible to specialized researchers and share it with the community.

Education:
● Ph.D., Computer Science, University of British Columbia (UBC)

Research Interests:
● Scalable system infrastructures
● Aspect-oriented software development
● Distributed virtualization

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(he/him)

Dr. Michal Aibin is an associate professor of computer science at Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University. Outside of his role at Northeastern, he is also currently a research faculty at British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Aibin was born in 1989 in Poland. He began his doctoral studies at the Department of Systems and Computer Networks at the Wroclaw University of Technology in 2012, where he was twice awarded the dean’s award and a scholarship to the best Ph.D. students. He received his doctoral degree in June 2017 by defending the thesis: "Dynamic Routing Algorithms for Cloud-Ready Elastic Optical Networks." He currently upholds his first academic position, at the British Columbia University of Technology, Vancouver, Canada, in the Department of Computing, where he was awarded the Employee Excellence Award in the Applied Research category. He joined Northeastern University in 2020 as a part-time associate professor.

His research interests include the optimization of various processes using adaptive approaches, such as machine learning. His recent focus is on cognitive networking. In particular, data analytics, machine learning and deep learning concepts applied to optical networks to enable cognitive network data analysis.

Research Interests:
● Machine Learning
● Data Analytics

Education:
● PhD Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

Awards and Recognition
● Employee Excellence Award in Applied Research from British Columbia University of Technology

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(she/her)

Mindfulness is a major motivating force in Neda Changizi’s life and career. She is the founder, designer, and builder of an app to support Farsi-speaking users in their mindfulness meditation practices. She also practices mindfulness meditation to help bring patience and compassion to her classroom, where she has taught courses in web and mobile application development as a part-time lecturer with Khoury College in Vancouver for the past two years. Changizi cares deeply about supporting her students as they master computer science and relishes the moments of pride and recognition when her students figure out how to apply a technique from her class to the problem at hand.

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(he/him)

Timothy Edmunds is a professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. He earned his bachelor’s from the University of British Columbia and his doctorate from Rutgers University. His area of teaching includes discrete mathematics, algorithms, data structures, and statistics.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Edmunds worked as a postdoc at the University of British Columbia and as an instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

In his free time, he enjoys orienteering.

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(he/him)

Cristian Penarrieta is a senior software engineer at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus. He earned his master’s in computer software engineering from the University of British Columbia.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Penarrieta worked as a senior software engineer at Electronic Arts. He currently also works as a senior software engineer at Gusto.

Outside of work, he enjoys barbequing and watching soccer.

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(he/him)

Mohsen Soltanifar is currently Senior Biostatistican at ClinChoice and an adjunct lecturer at Northeastern University in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
He has 2+ years experience in CRO/Pharma and 8+ years experience in Healthcare. His main area of interest in statistics is Clinical Trials with focus of R software applications in their design, analysis, and result presentations. He got his PhD in Biostatistics from University of Toronto in Canada in 2020 and as of that year has served as registered reviewer for 15+ journals including "Current Oncology" and "Clinical and Translational
Neurosicence(CTN)".

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