Education

PhD in Digital Transformation and Innovation

2020 - present
University of Ottawa

MSc in System Science

2018 - 2020
University of Ottawa

BSc in Aerospace Engineering

2012 - 2017
Sharif University of Technology

Experiences

PhD Researcher

Sept 2020 - Present
Nanda Lab, University of Ottawa, Ottawa

System Safety Research Intern

Jan 2020 - May 2020
Brane Inc, Ottawa

MSc Student

Jan 2018 - Aug 2020
CSM Lab, University of Ottawa, Ottawa

Research

My research focuses on making robots and cyberphysical systems safer. Soecifically, I am interested in Machine Learning (ML) components and how they impact the safety of the system. To that end, I have developed an effective and efficient tool to identify the hazard boundary of ML components via scalable parallel simulations. Furthermore, I am developing methods and tools to monitor the ML component during its operation at runtime. My research is supported by Auxon Corporation, Mitacs and Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

Runtime Safety Monitoring of Learned Components - This ongoing research focuses on developing safety monitors for learned components.
Hazard Boundary Identification of ML-enabled Autonomous Systems - In this project we proposed MLCSHE, a cooperative coevolution algorithm with a probabilistic fitness function to identify the hazard boundary of a machine learning component which is embedded in an atuonomous system. MLCSHE uses the actual system and scalable parallel simulations to identify the hazard boundary.

Publications

  • Identifying the Hazard Boundary of ML-enabled Autonomous Systems Using Cooperative Co-Evolutionary Search
  • Sepehr Sharifi, Donghwan Shin, Lionel C. Briand, Nathan Aschbacher
    ArXiv Preprints
  • Specification and analysis of legal contracts with Symboleo
  • Alireza Parvizimosaed, Sepehr Sharifi, Daniel Amyot, Luigi Logrippo, Marco Roveri, Aidin Rasti, Ali Roudak, John Mylopoulos
    Journal of Software and System Modeling, 21, 2395–2427, 2022
  • Symboleo: Towards a specification language for legal contracts
  • Sepehr Sharifi, Alireza Parvizimosaed, Daniel Amyot, Luigi Logrippo, John Mylopoulos
    28th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, 2020
  • Subcontracting, assignment, and substitution for legal contracts in Symboleo
  • Alireza Parvizimosaed, Sepehr Sharifi, Daniel Amyot, Luigi Logrippo, John Mylopoulos
    39th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, 2020
  • Social Dependence Relationships in Requirements Engineering
  • John Mylopoulos, Daniel Amyot, Luigi Logrippo, Alireza Parvizimosaed, Sepehr Sharifi
    13th International i* Workshop, 2020
  • Goal Modeling for FinTech Certification
  • Sepehr Sharifi, Patrick McLaughlin, Daniel Amyot, John Mylopoulos
    13th International i* Workshop, 2020