Fatemeh Abdollahi
AI Researcher
Welcome!
I’m Fatemeh, an AI researcher with a passion for creating intelligent systems that are both reliable and easy to understand. I earned my MSc in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, where I completed my thesis on program synthesis and reinforcement learning under the guidance of Prof. Matthew E. Taylor and Prof. Levi Lelis. During my studies, I was actively involved in the Intelligent Robot Learning Lab, the RLAI Lab, and Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii).
Interests
- Reinforcement Learning
- Human-in-the-loop
- Program Synthesis
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
Education
MSc Computing Science
University of Alberta University
BSc Computer Engineering
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
My Research
My primary research interest is in reinforcement learning (RL) and its application to real-world problems. I’m interested in incorporating human feedback into RL systems to better align them with human preferences, and I’m exploring ways to automate this process using large language models (LLMs) as substitutes for direct human input. Additionally, I’m interested in integrating neural networks with symbolic reasoning methods to improve the interpretability and generalizability of RL agents. I believe by combining these approaches, we can develop more effective and understandable RL systems that perform better in complex, real-world scenarios.
Featured Publications
Selected Projects
Recent Publications
(2025).
The Evolving Landscape of LLM- and VLM-Integrated Reinforcement Learning.
IJCAI 2025.
(2023).
Can You Improve My Code? Optimizing Programs with Local Search.
IJCAI 2023.