people

Dr. Michael Ekstrand is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Information Science and PI of INERTIAL. He has 15 years of experience in recommender systems research and education, and is broadly interested in ensuring that information access systems support human flourishing. You can read more about his work on his website.

Sushobhan Parajuli is a first-year PhD student in Information Science at Drexel University, working with Dr. Michael Ekstrand on Recommender Systems. He is currently working with the team at POPROX. Sushobhan obtained his undergraduate degree in mathematics from the CUNY Baruch College.

Samira Vaez Barenji is a first-year PhD student in Information Science at Drexel University, working with Dr. Michael Ekstrand. Her research focuses on making information access systems fair and useful for everyone. In particular, she studies methods to balance or mitigate various biases in ranking and recommendation. She holds a master’s degree in computer engineering with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence from K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Iran.