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Dr. Shirin Seyedsalehi
Assistant Professor
DepartmentInformation Technology Management
EducationComputer Engineering, PhD
Phone416-979-5000 x 544807
Areas of ExpertiseResponsible AI, Information Systems, Machine Learning
Dr. Shirin Seyedsalehi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology Management at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University. Her current responsibilities include teaching undergraduate courses in Business Intelligence, and programming, as well as supervising student research projects. She is also actively involved in curriculum development and departmental service.
Dr. Seyedsalehi holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Toronto Metropolitan University, where her research focused on fairness in AI and information systems. Her work proposes novel methods for mitigating gender bias in search systems, contributing to more equitable and transparent AI-driven decision-making processes. Her research interests lie at the intersection of information systems, machine learning, algorithmic fairness, and natural language processing.
She has authored peer-reviewed publications in top-tier venues such as Machine Learning Journal, and has presented her work at Microsoft, Mila, York, and McMaster University. Her teaching philosophy centers on fostering critical thinking, ethical awareness, and practical skills in students, aiming to bridge theoretical knowledge with real-world applications. Her courses emphasize active learning, collaborative problem-solving, and the responsible design of AI technologies.
@shirin_seyedsalehi_
Responsible AI, Information Systems, Machine Learning
| Invited presentations |
| Understanding and Mitigating Gender Bias in Information Retrieval Systems, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE), Concordia University, Fall 2024. |
| Understanding and Mitigating Gender Bias in Information Retrieval Systems, EECS Seminar Series, York University, Fall 2024. |
| Gender Disentangled Representation Learning in Neural Rankers, CSE Seminar Series, McMaster University, Fall 2024. |
| Gender Biases in Neural Rankers, Microsoft Research, Fall 2022. |
| Tutorials |
| Understanding and Mitigating Gender Bias in Information Retrieval Systems, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR2023). |
| Gender Fairness in Information Retrieval Systems, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, The 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2022). |
| Journal papers (Accepted papers) |
| Understanding and Mitigating Gender Bias in Information Retrieval Systems, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Batool AlMou-sawi, Zack Marshall, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval (Impact Factor: 10.4), accepted and to appear, 2024. |
| Gender Disentangled Representation Learning in Neural Rankers, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Sara Salamat, Negar Arabzadeh, Sajad Ebrahimi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, Machine Learning Journal (Impact Factor: 4.3), accepted and to appear, 2024. |
| A Contrastive Neural Disentanglement Approach for Query Performance Prediction, Sara Salamat, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Amin Bigdeli, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, Machine Learning Journal (Impact Factor: 4.3), accepted and to appear, 2024. |
| Generative Adversarial Networks for Propagation Channel Modeling, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Vahid Pourahmadi, Hamid Sheikhzadeh, Ali Hossein Gharari, AUT Journal of Modeling and Simulation, 2022. |
| Journal papers (In progress/under review papers:) |
| A Generalizable Framework for Bias Mitigation in Dense Neural Rankers, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (Impact Factor: 7.2), Submitted, 2024. |
| Self-Paced Fair Ranking with Loss as a Proxy for Bias, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Hai Son Le, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, 34th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management; CIKM2025 (Core Rank: A). |
| Refairmulate: A Benchmark Dataset for Gender-Fair Query Reformulations, Hai Son Le, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, 34th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management; CIKM2025 (Core Rank: A). |
| Conference papers |
| Bias-aware Curriculum Sampling for Fair Ranking, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Hai Son Le, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, The 48TH International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval; SIGIR2025 (Core Rank: A*). |
| Reinforcement Learning for Effective Few-Shot Ranking, Shiva Soleimani, Sajad Ebrahimi, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Fattane Zarrinkalam, and Ebrahim Bagheri, The 48TH International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval; SIGIR2025 (Core Rank: A*). |
| De-Biasing Relevance Judgements for Fair Ranking, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Bhaskar Mitra, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval; ECIR2023 (Core Rank: A). |
| Neural Disentanglement of Query Difficulty and Semantics, Sara Salamt, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Amin Bigdeli, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, 32nd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management; CIKM2023 (Core Rank: A). |
| Don't Raise Your Voice, Improve Your Argument: Learning to Retrieve Convincing Arguments, Sara Salamat, Negar Arabzadeh, Amin Bigdeli, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval; ECIR2023 (Core Rank: A). |
| Addressing Gender-related Performance Disparities in Neural Rankers, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, The 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval; SIGIR 2022 (Core Rank: A*). |
| Bias-aware Fair Neural Ranking for Addressing Stereotypical Gender Biases, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Bhaskar Mitra, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, 25th International Conference on Extending Database Technology; EDBT2022 (Core Rank: A). |
| A Neural Approach to Forming Coherent Teams in Collaboration Networks, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Radin Hamidi Rad, Mehdi Kargar, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, 25th International Conference on Extending Database Technology; EDBT2022 (Core Rank: A). |
| Matches Made in Heaven: Toolkit and Large-Scale Datasets for Supervised Query Reformulation, Negar Arabzadeh, Amin Bigdeli, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat, Ebrahim Bagheri, 30th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management; CIKM2021 (Core Rank: A). |
| On the Orthogonality of Bias and Utility in Ad hoc Retrieval, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, The 44th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval; SIGIR2021 (Core Rank: A*). |
| A Light-weight Strategy for Restraining GenderBiases in Neural Rankers, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Shirin Seyedsalehi, Morteza Zihayat and Ebrahim Bagheri, 44th European Conference on Information Retrieval; ECIR2022 (Core Rank: A). |