Niloofar Yousefi

Niloofar Yousefi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida (UCF), affiliated with the College of Engineering and Computer Science. She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from UCF and previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UCF’s Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) laboratory. Her research focuses on Machine Learning, Multi-Task Learning, and Agent-based Modeling with applications in healthcare analytics, computational social science, and drug discovery.

• Education:
  • Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics
  • Master of Science in Operations Research
  • Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research

Her research interests include developing interpretable machine learning models for drug-target interaction prediction, fairness in AI systems, and understanding information dynamics in social networks. She has contributed to advancements in low-resource speaker adaptation, parameter-efficient fine-tuning of large language models, and entropy-based analysis of media influence pathways.

Recent publications highlight her work on bidirectional language models, pan-cancer drug inhibitor discovery, and ethical AI frameworks for mitigating statistical biases. Her research bridges computational methods with real-world challenges in healthcare, social media, and pharmaceuticals.

• Labs/Teams: Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Laboratory at UCF