Hi, I’m Niki. I’m a Computer Science PhD student at the University of California, Riverside, working at the Vision and Learning Group and the CODE Lab under the supervision of Professor Amit K. Roy-Chowdhury and Professor Vishwanath Saragadam. I received my B.Sc. in Computer Engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology, where I was admitted with a top 0.07% rank (293 out of 400,000+) in Iran’s National University Entrance Exam.

My research interests span computer vision, image processing, NLP, and robust machine learning, with a general focus on making AI systems more reliable in real-world settings. During my Ph.D., I have worked on improving the stability and quality of image restoration methods based on diffusion models, and I have explored how multimodal learning systems behave when some inputs are missing or unreliable. I also have experience with 3D reconstruction and neural rendering, including camera pose estimation and modern radiance-field methods. I’m motivated by problems at the intersection of visual understanding, generative modeling, and trustworthy AI. Beyond my research, I enjoy playing the piano and reading novels!