Education

B.A.,  Literature & Philosophy, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)
M.A., Communication Sciences & Journalism Studies, Concordia University (Montreal, Canada)
Ph.D., Information Science, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)

Background

Research

Artificial intelligence, cognitive science, data science, cybersecurity, network analysis, communication, information science.

Novin was a member of one of the only Canadian research teams studying science media models using data science. He built software to facilitate these models and tested them on both scientists and science journalists. The experiments yielded positive results and he expanded his research into information science and human-computer interactions at the University of British Columbia. The focus of his research uses cognitive science and data science to experiment with computer systems and artificial intelligence. The systems range from coding languages to management systems.

Funded Research

Concordia Science Journalism Project - $20,000.
This grant was used to build software that networked scientists with science-journalist.

Anne Pitternick Award - $1000.
This grant was used to recruit participants for Novin's dissertation on how people learn and think about information while using search engines and the Internet and the cognitive biases that emerge.

Teaching

Using his experience as a data scientist alongside his research on cognition and computers, Alamir Novin teaches Data Science, Cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence. Novin applies established prior scholarly literature in the cognitive and learning sciences to his classrooms. These theories range from research on efficient note-taking practices to the complexities of group theory.

Recent Publications

Novin, A. (2021). A Meta Framing Problem How Can A.I. Conceptualize Search as Learning? Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology for SIG-AI.

Novin, A. (2021).  How Document-genre and Document-order in a Search Page Lead to Cognitive Biases.  SIGDOC ’21: The 39th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication

Novin, A. (2018). Reconstructing “Real News” via Computer-Human Interactions. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper SRC17, 1–6. 

Novin, A., and Meyers, E., “Making Sense of Conflicting Science Information: Exploring Bias in the Search Engine Result Page,” CHIIR ’17 Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Conference Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, pp. 175–184.

Novin, A., & Meyers, E., (2017). “Four Biases in Interface Design Interactions.” International Conference of Design, User Experience, and Usability. (pp. 163-173) Springer

Novin, A., & Meyers, E., (2017). Misinformed by Algorithm: How Search Engine Results Can Lead to Biased Student Writing. In Proceedings of the 2017 American Educational Research Association.

Awards

• Best Presentation Award for ASIS&T SIG-Artificial Intelligence (SIG-AI 2021)
• Top 5 Finalist at ACM SIG-Documents (SIGDOC 2021) Student Research Competition
  
• Top 25 Finalist at ACM Computer-Human Interactions (CHI 2019) Student Research Competition
  
• Best Paper at ACM Conference for Human Information Interactions and Retrieval (CHIIR 2017)
  
• Best Paper Award for Design, User Experience, and Usability at Human-Computer Interactions International (Springer 2017)
• Second Best Paper at The American Educational Research Association SIG-Media Culture and Learning (AERA 2017)

Service

• USC's School of Information BSIS Committee Member
• USC's School of Information Curriculum Committee member