I am a PhD student in Machine Learning at Georgia Tech, working in the NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT). My research is on Trustworthy AI through temporal representation learning for healthcare: models that learn from records with irregular visits, missing measurements, and patients who leave before the outcome is observed, and still give each patient a useful, interpretable estimate.

Most of this work is done in collaboration with Shriners Children’s, where we study different aspects of curve progression for adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Alongside research I have led student organizations at Georgia Tech and Sharif, including a term as president of Georgia Tech’s Iranian Student Association and a current seat on AI4OPT’s student leadership.

Program
Ph.D. in Machine Learning, Georgia Tech ISyE, 2024 to present
Methods
Temporal representation learning, survival analysis, temporal phenotyping, irregular time series
Earlier
B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology

News (scroll)

  • 2026:📄 Our paper “Interpretable Phenotype Discovery Using Temporal Risk-Aware Clustering” (TRACE) was accepted at the Interpretability4Discovery Workshop @ NeurIPS 2026.
  • Jan 2026:🏆 Second place poster award at the State of Science Meeting, Shriners Children’s.
  • Oct 2025:🏆 First place poster award at the NSF AIVO Summit for AI Institutes Leadership.
  • Sep 2025:🏆 Our collagen X biomarker study received the John H. Moe Award for Best Basic Science/Translational Research Poster at the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) Annual Meeting.
  • Sep 2025:🎤 Our POSNA Annual Meeting talk was nominated for Best Translational Research Oral Presentation.
  • Mar 2025:🤝 Joined the AI4OPT student leadership.
  • Jan 2025:📄 Our paper on network indices for traffic flow imputation was published in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
  • 2024:🎓 Started my PhD at Georgia Tech and joined AI4OPT.

Where I work

Georgia Tech Georgia Tech ISyEPhD program in Machine Learning AI Institute for Advances in Optimization AI4OPTNSF AI institute, my research home Shriners Children’s Shriners Children’sClinical research partner

Research and publications

Select the poster to view it full size.

With Shriners Children’s, 2024 to present

Personalized risk assessment in idiopathic scoliosis

Question
How much growth does this child have left? Bracing decisions depend on it, but today’s maturity scores are population-based and retrospective.
Approach
A survival model that reads each patient’s irregular clinic history, static features, and the collagen X (CXM) blood biomarker, and predicts time to growth cessation from any landmark age.
Recognition
John H. Moe Award at SRS (Sep 2025), first place at the NSF AIVO Summit (Oct 2025), second place at the Shriners State of Science Meeting (Jan 2026).

Publications

  • CORRin review

    Personalized Prediction of Growth Cessation in Adolescents with Idiopathic Scoliosis Using Longitudinal Clinical Data and a Type X Collagen Biomarker: A Prospective Cohort Study

    Asal Roudbari, Michelle C. Welborn, Susan Sienko, BLISS Study Group, Reza Zandehshahvar, Pascal Van Hentenryck

    Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (CORR), journal article

    Under review
  • IMASTin review

    Growth markers and the timing and magnitude of curve change in idiopathic scoliosis

    Asal Roudbari, Reza Zandehshahvar, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Michelle C. Welborn, Susan Sienko

    34th International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques (IMAST), 2027

    Under review
  • SRS2025

    Collagen X Biomarker (CXM) is Predictive of Growth Cessation in Idiopathic Scoliosis

    Michelle C. Welborn, Asal Roudbari, Reza Zandehshahvar, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Amer F. Samdani, Robert H. Cho, Joseph D. Stone, Selina C. Poon, Vishwas R. Talwalkar, Michal Szczodry, Purnendu Gupta, James O. Sanders, Susan Sienko

    Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) Annual Meeting, 2025

    John H. Moe Award, Best Basic Science/Translational Research PosterSRS announcement
  • POSNA2025

    Biomarker Longitudinal Idiopathic Scoliosis Study: The Impact of Growth on Curve Progression in Braced Patients with Idiopathic Scoliosis Who Experience Curve Progression vs. Curve Regression

    Michelle C. Welborn, Asal Roudbari, Reza Zandehshahvar, James O. Sanders, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Amer F. Samdani, Joseph D. Stone, Robert H. Cho, Selina C. Poon, Vishwas R. Talwalkar, Michal Szczodry, Purnendu Gupta, Susan Sienko

    Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) Annual Meeting, 2025

    Nominated, Best Translational Research Oral Presentation

Select the poster to view it full size.

NeurIPS 2026 workshop paper

TRACE: temporal risk-aware clustering

Question
Patients reach the same diagnosis at different speeds and by different routes. Can we find patient groups that stay predictive without flattening those differences?
Approach
TRACE learns a time-aware representation of each visit history, maps it to a soft phenotype that updates as new visits arrive, and predicts the future diagnosis only through that phenotype.
Result
On ADNI (1,788 participants, 10,941 visits), the best phenotype separation at 24 months of the five methods compared: SI 42.0% against 36.2% for the next best.

Publications

  • NeurIPSworkshop, 2026

    Interpretable Phenotype Discovery Using Temporal Risk-Aware Clustering

    Asal Roudbari, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Reza Zandehshahvar

    Interpretability4Discovery Workshop at NeurIPS, 2026

    Accepted

Before my PhD I worked on transportation networks, robotics, and power systems at Sharif University of Technology, the University of Tehran, and Cross Labs.

Publications

  • IEEE T-ITS2025

    The Impact of Network Indices Integration on Traffic Flow Imputation Accuracy: A Machine Learning Approach

    Sina Sabzekar, Asal Roudbari, Arash Dehghani, Artin Safaeiestalkhzir, Zahra Amini

    IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 5411–5421, 2025

    Paper
  • Springerchapter, 2024

    Genetic Algorithm Applications to Power Management

    Asal Roudbari, Mahdi Khosravy, Olaf Witkowski

    In Frontiers in Genetic Algorithm Theory and Applications, Springer Nature, Singapore, 2024

    Chapter
  • ICRoM2023

    Autonomous Vision-Based Robotic Grasping of Household Objects: A Practical Case Study

    Asal Roudbari, Mahdi Dalvand, Navid Pasiar, Navid Asadi, Mohammad Yousefi, Mehdi Tale Masouleh

    11th RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICRoM), IEEE, 2023

    Paper

Experience

  • AI for scoliosis

    Sep 2024 to present

    AI4OPT, Georgia Tech, with Shriners Children’s. Supervisors: Dr. Reza Zandehshahvar and Prof. Pascal Van Hentenryck

    Developed a personalized machine learning pipeline that predicts growth cessation in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis from irregular longitudinal patient data, working with orthopedic clinicians so that model outputs line up with real bracing decisions.

  • Line graph neural network for spatial traffic flow imputation

    Jul to Dec 2023

    Sharif University of Technology. Supervisor: Prof. Zahra Amini

  • Object grasping with a two-finger gripper and a Delta robot

    Apr to Sep 2023

    Bachelor’s project, Human and Robot Interaction Lab, University of Tehran. Supervisor: Prof. Mehdi Tale Masouleh

  • Applications of genetic algorithms in power management

    Feb to Apr 2023

    Cross Labs, Japan (remote). Supervisor: Dr. Mahdi Khosravy

  • Object localization at sea: estimation methods in wide ranges

    Jul to Oct 2022

    Summer research internship on ECAMARIS, a project with ABB. Marine Technology group (Risk and Intelligence in Marine Systems), Aalto University. Supervisors: Prof. Osiris Valdez Banda and Dr. Meriam Chaal; worked with postdoctoral researcher Ahmad BahooToroody

  • Student Leadership Member, AI4OPT

    Mar 2025 to present

    Georgia Institute of Technology

    Represent PhD students in seminars, mentorship initiatives, and research culture discussions; organize social events for the institute; took part in Seth Bonder Camp.

  • President, Iranian Student Association

    Jan 2025 to Mar 2026

    Georgia Institute of Technology. Communications Director from Jan 2025, President from Oct 2025

    Directed the association’s email, social media, and event communication, and coordinated cultural and academic programming for the Iranian student community.

  • Communications Director, Resana (EE Student Council)

    May 2021 to Sep 2022

    Sharif University of Technology

    Led communication and outreach for the Electrical Engineering student council; organized seminars, competitions, workshops, charity initiatives, and student well-being activities.

  • Competition Organizer and Communications Director, “Spark”

    Spring 2022

    Sharif University of Technology with I.D.E.A. Association, Germany

    Co-organized an international student competition, handling participant communication and technical support.

  • Event Host and Organizer: Emeet1, Emeet2, ReACT

    2021 to 2022

    Sharif University of Technology

    Hosted university-wide cultural events with more than 300 participants and managed logistics, promotion, and on-site coordination.

  • Ph.D. in Machine Learning

    2024 to present

    Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Atlanta, GA

    Focus: temporal representation learning and survival analysis, with applications in healthcare.

  • B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Control and Dynamical Systems

    2020 to 2024

    Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

  • Diploma in Mathematics and Physics

    2014 to 2020

    National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET), Sari, Iran

All four are for one piece of work, the poster “Machine Learning for Personalized Risk Assessment in Idiopathic Scoliosis,” with Shriners Children’s. Select the poster to view it full size, or read about the research.

  • Poster Award, 2nd place

    Jan 2026

    State of Science Meeting, Shriners Children’s

  • Poster Award, 1st place

    Oct 2025

    NSF AIVO Summit for AI Institutes Leadership

  • John H. Moe Award, Best Basic Science/Translational Research Poster

    Sep 2025

    Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) Annual Meeting

  • Nominated, Best Translational Research Oral Presentation

    Sep 2025

    Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) Annual Meeting