A LITTLE ABOUT ME
Hello random person on the internet! My name is Behzad (بهزاد).
I’m a Machine Learning Engineer working on Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Deep Learning. Currently, I’m at Google working on bringing Large Language Model capabilities to different products at Google.
Before Google, I was at Twitter working on using NLP signals to boost recommendations systems, but then Musk happened 🙃.
And before that, I was doing NLP research at Megagon.ai which was absolutely 🔥.
Besides work, I enjoy drinking coffee ☕.studying & playing 🎵.supporting AC Milan 🔴⚫.running 🏃 (if my bad knee allows).napping / sleeping 💤.
THE TODO LIST
This is a list of things (first compiled on July 2022) that I wish to achieve. Just like OKRs, I’d say reaching 70% would be a good 😅. Obviously, the list doesn’t include everything cause some goals are really personal. Also, I’ll keep adding to the list (and occasionally remove from it) cause people change.
- Don’t die
- I’ve done a good job so far.
- Run 🏃 a half-marathon
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My longest run is 8.3 Miles
- Visit 30 different countries 🗺️
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I’m at 8 countries (excluding Iran & US)
- 🇦🇪 🇮🇹 🇫🇮 🇯🇵 🇲🇽 🇨🇷 🇧🇷 🇨🇦
- Get 5K followers on Twitter
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I’m at 769 followers
- Visit 20 National Parks 🏞️ in US
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I’m at 6 national parks
- Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Rocky Mountain, Haleakalā, Pinnacles, Grand Canyon
- Train to do 20 pull-ups
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I’m at 0 pull-ups!
- Watch an AC Milan 🔴⚫ match at San Siro
- Run 🏃 a marathon
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My longest run is 8.3 Miles
- Aprender a hablar español
- If we know each other and you speak Spanish, help me! 😅
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I’m at 104 out of 1193 Duolingo lessons
- Write a song ♫
- Win a best-paper award
- Learn to sail ⛵
- Learn to play the piano 🎹 (relatively well)
- See the northern lights
- Write a (non-technical) book 📚
- Participate in an Olympic-distance triathlon 🏊 🚴 🏃
– I need to take proper swimming lessons- Give a keynote talk
- Learn to play guitar 🎸 (just strumming chords is fine)
- Learn to surf 🏄
- Run 🏃 a mile under 6 minutes
- Have coffee ☕ with a notable person I admire (author, musician, etc)
– If you are Paul McCartney, please agree to this!- Learn to harmonize
- Learn to work a camera 📷 & make good-quality videos
- Become a good cook 🧑🏻🍳
– I’m an ok cook, but I’d like to learn more.
- Play music 🪕 on the street
- Learn to ski ⛷️
- Get into rock climbing 🧗🏻
- Finish a half Ironman triathlon 🏊 🚴 🏃
- Be a guest on a television 📺 show or a podcast
LET’S SOCIALIZE
- Write a song ♫
- Aprender a hablar español
LATEST FROM THE BLOG
PUBLICATIONS
TWICE – Twitter Content Embeddings — DL4SR 2022Xianjing Liu, Behzad Golshan, Kenny Leung, Aman Saini, Vivek Kulkarni, Ali Mollahosseini, Jeff MoAdaptive Rule Discovery for Labeling Text Data — SIGMOD 2021Sainyam Galhotra, Behzad Golshan, Wang-Chiew TanJohannes Bjerva, Nikita Bhutani, Behzad Golshan, Wang-Chiew Tan, Isabelle AugensteinSampo: Unsupervised Knowledge Base Construction for Opinions and Implications — AKBC 2020
Nikita Bhutani, Aaron Traylor, Chen Chen, Xiaolan Wang, Behzad Golshan, Wang-Chiew TanA. Traylor, C. Chen, B. Golshan, X. Wang, Y. Li, Y. Suhara, J. Li, C. Demiralp, W. TanEmu: Enhancing Multilingual Sentence Embeddings with Semantic Specialization — AAAI 2020
Wataru Hirota, Yoshihiko Suhara, Behzad Golshan, Wang-Chiew TanB. Golshan, G. Mihaila, C. Chen, J. Engel, Al. Halevy, Y. Suhara, W. Tan, M. MatuschekEssentia: Mining Domain-specific Paraphrases with Word-Alignment Graphs — TextGraphs 2019Danni Ma, Chen Chen, Behzad Golshan, Wang-Chiew TanBehzad Golshan, Evimaria Terzi, Panayiotis TsaparasA team-formation algorithm for faultline minimization — Expert Systems with Applications 2019Sanaz Bahargam, Behzad Golshan, Theodoros Lappas, Evimaria TerziKoko: a system for scalable semantic querying of text — PVLDB 2018 (Demo Track)Xiaolan Wang, Jiyu Komiya, Yoshihiko Suhara, Aaron Feng, Behzad Golshan, Alon Halevy, Wang-Chiew TanScalable semantic querying of text — PVLDB 2018Xiaolan Wang, Aaron Feng, Behzad Golshan, Alon Halevy, George Mihaila, Hidekazu Oiwa, Wang-Chiew TanA. Asai, S. Evensen, B. Golshan, A. Halevy, V. Li, A. Lopatenko, D. Stepanov, Y. Suhara, W. Tan, Y. XuBigGorilla: An Open-Source Ecosystem for Data Preparation and Integration. — IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin 2018Chen Chen, Behzad Golshan, Alon Y Halevy, Wang-Chiew Tan, AnHai DoanMinimizing tension in teams — CIKM 2017Behzad Golshan, Evimaria TerziHomogeneity in web search results: Diagnosis and mitigation — Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology 2017Rakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evangelos E PapalexakisData integration: After the teenage years — SIGMOD/PODS (Invited Paper)Behzad Golshan, Alon Halevy, George Mihaila, Wang-Chiew TanFinding low-tension communities — SDM 2017Esther Galbrun, Behzad Golshan, Aristides Gionis, Evimaria TerziOverlap in the web search results of google and bing — Journal of Web Science 2016Rakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evangelos PapalexakisRakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evangelos PapalexakisOverlap Between Google and Bing Web Search Results! Twitter to the Rescue? — COSN (Conference on Online Social Networks) 2015
Rakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evangelos PapalexakisWhither social networks for web search? — KDD 2015 (Industry Track)
Rakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evangelos PapalexakisA study of distinctiveness in web results of two search engines — WWW 2015 Companion (Web Science Track)
Rakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evangelos PapalexakisRakesh Agrawal, Behzad Golshan, Evimaria TerziWhat do row and column marginals reveal about your dataset? — NeurIPS 2013
Behzad Golshan, John Byers, Evimaria TerziA framework for evaluating the smoothness of data-mining results — PKDD 2012
Gaurav Misra, Behzad Golshan, Evimaria TerziSofia Search: a tool for automating related-work search — SIGMOD 2012 (Demo Track)
Behzad Golshan, Theodoros Lappas, Evimaria TerziWORK EXPERIENCE
Google Software Engineer (2023 – Now)
I’m working on incorporating Google‘s LLM capabilities into different Google products.
Twitter ML Engineer (2022-2023)
I have been working on developing and utilizing NLP signals to improve different products at Twitter.
Megagon Labs Research Scientist (2016-2021)
I have been working on different NLP & machine-learning problems. Creating knowledge-bases (KBs) automatically from reviews, boosting performance of NLP models through KBs, and building question-answering (QA) and dialogue systems are a few examples.
One of my favorite projects was creating a dataset of self-reported moments that made people happy.
EDUCATION HISTORY
Boston University PhD in Computer Science (2010-2016)
I did my PhD at Massive Data, Algorithms, and Systems (MiDAS) Group under supervision of Prof. Evimaria Terzi. Most of my PhD work has been focused on data-mining methods and combinatorial optimization algorithms for real-world graphs.
University of Tehran BSc in Computer Engineering (2005-2010)
I love this place! This is where I started, made wonderful friends, and learned a lot about computers, algorithms, and myself.
INTERNSHIPS EXPERIENCES
Aalto University Research Intern (Summer 2015)
Microsoft Research Research Intern (Summer 2014)
oDesk (now Upwork) Research Intern (Summer 2013)
Sapienza University Research Intern (Summer 2012)
Adverplex (now Cogo Labs) Research Intern (Summer 2011)
VIEW MY LINKEDIN PROFILE
- Visit 20 National Parks 🏞️ in US
- Visit 30 different countries 🗺️
-