About

I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Clifford Lab, where I work on AI-driven methods for improving health and healthcare. My main focus is on developing unique sensing technologies to detect physiological and psychological patterns, with the goal of enabling early detection and personalized care to improve patient outcomes. For the past three years, I've been exploring new biomarkers for neurological disorders using wearable and nearable technologies. In collaboration with the Cognitive Empowerment Program and the Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, I’m working on identifying cognitive markers in older adults at risk for Mild Cognitive Impairment. This involves integrating data from NextSense in-ear EEG devices, wristband health monitors, and analyzing movement and social interactions to get a clearer picture of cognitive health. I’m also collaborating with The Center for Discovery on a project that looks at how sleep and daytime behaviors are linked in children with autism. For this, I'm building an end-to-end edge computing system using off-body sensors in a privacy-focused way to better understand the connection between sleep and health. Before coming to Emory for my postdoc, I earned my PhD from Georgia Tech. My PhD work focused on developing new approaches for knowledge discovery in nanophotonics, particularly using dimensionality reduction. This research helped speed up the design of nanoscale sensors by using explainable AI models to better understand how light interacts with matter! Looking ahead, my goal is to discover new health biomarkers for neurodiverse populations through cutting-edge wearable technology, building on the work I’ve published.

News

  • [April 2025] Yashar is invited to present at Profound Autism Summit “Predicting High-Risk Behaviors in Individuals with Profound Autism Using Sleep and Other Environmental Factorslink

  • [February 2025] Our paper titled “Feasibility of Assessing Cognitive Impairment via Distributed Camera Network and Privacy‐Preserving Edge Computing” has been published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring. link

  • [February 2025] Yashar gave at talk in CTSA Lunch and Learn Series on “Can Sleep Architecture and Behavior Patterns Predict Next-Day Challenging Behavior in Autism?

  • [January 2025] Our paper titled “From Motion to Emotion: Exploring Challenging Behaviors in Autism Spectrum Disorder Through Analysis of Wearable Physiology and Movement” has been published in Physiological Measurements. link

  • [November 2024] Yashar Presented at NeuroNext Postdoc Seminar on “Advancing Neurological Care Through Novel Sensing Pipelines for Detection and Intervention

  • [October 2024] Our paper titled “Off-body Sleep Analysis for Predicting Adverse Behavior in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder” has been published in IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. link

  • [July 2024] Yashar has been awarded the Thrasher Research Fund Early Career Award for the project titled “Enhancing Behavioral Understandings and Interventions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder using Artificial Intelligence.” More details can be found here.