People
Morteza is a Professor of Psychology and Computer Science and the Director of the Center for Computational Language Sciences. In his research, Morteza fuses Artificial Intelligence with cognitive theories to both build more robust and human-centric AI systems, and to explore how cultural and cognitive factors shape our moral values, beliefs, and decision-making.
Zhivar is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department. He earned his bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Tehran. His research interests and background lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence, particularly natural language processing, with social sciences such as economics, psychology, and complex social networks. Throughout his Ph.D., he has focused on NLP benchmarks and models, with a particular emphasis on reasoning abilities inspired by cognitive psychology, including analogical reasoning, prototype-based reasoning, and case-based reasoning. Zhivar aims to continue exploring the reasoning capabilities of large language models and how they compare to human reasoning from a cognitive psychology perspective.
Parsa Hejabi is a Computer Science Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California and a graduate research assistant at the Morality and Language Lab under the supervision of Prof. Morteza Dehghani. He has worked on enhancing NLP models within multiple instance learning environments, developing multimodal annotation platforms for AI in policing, and improving NLP models for under-resourced languages such as Farsi. Previously, Parsa earned an M.S. in Computer Science from USC and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Shahid Beheshti University. He also has experience working as a software engineer at one of the largest e-commerce companies in the Middle East.
Elnaz is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department of the University of Southern California. She received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology (2021) and an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (2023). Her research interests lie in Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science. She is especially interested in studying cultures and social phenomena through text.
Nona is an incoming Ph.D. Student in Brain and Cognitive Science at the University of Southern California. She received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (2024). Her research interests lie in Computational Cognitive Science and Natural Language Processing. She is especially interested in investigating the neural correlates of moral language in prosocial behavior.
Mehrshad Saadatinia is a Computer Science Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California, advised by Prof. Morteza Dehghani. His research interests are cognitively grounded AI, aligning large language models to human cognition, and mechanistic interpretability. Previously, he earned an M.S. in Computer Science from USC and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Shahid Beheshti University.
Chenxiao Yu is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) in Economics from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China and an M.S. in Data Science from USC. His research focuses on Human-Centered AI, interpretable and controllable foundation models, and AI safety and robustness. He is particularly interested in applying insights from cognitive psychology to better understand and improve foundation models.
