Moeen Mostafavi
You never forget cold weather after living in South Bend for two years :)
You never forget cold weather after living in South Bend for two years :)

Hello there, and welcome to my homepage!

I’m Moeen Mostafavi, I work at the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) applying machine learning and large-scale data analysis to mortgage-backed securities and fixed-income research. My academic work sits at the intersection of NLP, machine learning, and computational social science. I earned my Ph.D. in Systems & Information Engineering at the University of Virginia, where my dissertation on emotion understanding in messaging integrated transformer models with Affect Control Theory and led to a paper in Sociological Methodology (2024).

Along the way, I’ve collaborated across sociology, economics, kinesiology, nursing, political science, data science, business, and engineering on projects ranging from telematics-based fleet safety (recognized by NAFA as a “Best Special Project in North America”) to RFID + haptics for collision prediction and technology-enabled sleep tracking in older adults with MCI.

If you’re new here, the best places to start are: About (short bio & highlights) and Projects (selected work with links). You can also find more on Google Scholar and LinkedIn.

Updates

  • Jul. 2024 — Article on contextual embeddings and affect in digital communication published in Sociological Methodology. Read
  • 2023 — Completed Ph.D., Systems & Information Engineering, University of Virginia. Joined the Virginia Retirement System.
  • Apr. 2022 - I am session chair at the IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS 2022).
  • Apr. 2022 - I received ROBERT T. FERGUSON III MEMORIAL AWARD which is an award for a graduate student who has been the most helpful to other graduate students.
  • Apr. 2022 - I was selected as one of the finalists in UVA SLAM competition (a modified form of 3M talks).
  • Apr. 2022 - I presented "Using deep textual analysis to supplement survey ratings" in Southen Sociological Society annual meeting at Birmingham, AL.
  • Dec. 2021 - I started investment intern position at Virginia Retirement System (VRS).
  • July. 2021 - I have succussfully passed my defense proposal exam.
  • May. 2021 - I have been awarded an NSF Student Scholarship to attend the International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP) 2021 .
  • Apr. 2021 - The capstone Mindful driving project is presented at IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS).
  • Mrch. 2021 - Read media coverage about over mindful driving project here.
  • Feb. 2021 - Our paper entitled "A Tale of Two Metrics: Polling and Financial Contributions as a Measure of Performance" has been accepted in IEEE SysCon 2021.
  • Dec. 2020 - Our paper entitled "How emoji and word embedding helps to unveil emotional transitions during online messaging" has been accepted in IEEE SysCon 2021.
  • Aug. 2020 - I have succussfully passed my qualifying exam.