Hello! ๐Ÿ‘‹

This is Saeed

PhD Candidate | AI & Robotics

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About Me

I am a PhD candidate, expected to graduate in January 2026, with experience and interest in artificial intelligence for robotics and autonomous vehicles. I have hands-on experience with foundation models (both LLMs and VLMs), reinforcement learning , and world models for robot learning and verification, especially in complex and uncertain environments. My research focuses on developing AI systems for autonomous vehicles in mixed-autonomy traffic and safety and efficiency verification of automated vehicles in simulation.

Python (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) C++ Julia Gym Waymax GPUDrive

Experience

Toyota Motors Europe, Belgium

VLMs and Transformers, Research Intern

Toyota Motors Europe, Belgium

Oct. 2025 โ€“ present
  • Training transformer-based vision models for predicting abnormal scenarios from dashcam videos
  • Conducting a comparative analysis of rule-based vs. AI-based anomaly detection methods in autonomous systems
Oxford University, UK

Multi-agent Learning, Exchange PhD

Oxford University, UK

Aug. 2025 - present
  • Developed a Self-play MARL framework for improving the performance of agents transferred from one environment to another, achieving 80-120% success rate improvement
  • Implemented behavior cloning (BC) policies in complex and uncertain environments with more than 60 agents in each scenario
BMW Group, Germany

Simulation Agent Modeler, Visiting Research Engineer

BMW Group, Germany

Aug. 2024
  • Debugged a simulation agent model and an autonomous control algorithm for safety-critical scenarios
  • Designed and implemented 14 challenging scenarios for safety validation of autonomous vehicles
TU Delft, Netherlands

PhD Candidate

TU Delft, Netherlands

Jan. 2022 โ€“ present
  • Developed an award-winning real-time MPC-based simulation framework for autonomous vehicles (IEEE ITSC 2023 Award Winner)
  • Leveraged Foundation Models (VLMs) for critical trajectory failure detection with 90%+ accuracy on zero-shot learning
  • Developed a hybrid MPC-RL framework for motion planning with 50% higher efficiency
  • Co-designed simAgent algorithms for the EU Horizon 2020 flagship Project Hi-Drive

Publications

View all publications
on Google Scholar

Journal Publications

Education

PhD Candidate (Exchange)

Oxford University, United Kingdom

Aug 2025 - Jan 2026
  • Research Topic: Multi-agent self-play reinforcement learning for generalizable agents
  • Advisors: Prof. Shimon Whiteson, Prof. Jakob Foerster

PhD Candidate in AI for Autonomous Vehicles

Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Jan 2022 - Jan 2026
  • Advisors: Prof. Bart van Arem, Dr. Simeon C. Calvert
  • IES IROS SYPA Award 2025
  • TU Delft TMI Grant for Collaborative Research 2025

MSc. (Cum Laude, Dean's Award)

Iran University of Science and Technology

2014 - 2017
  • GPA: 3.94/4.00
  • Graduate Student Dean's Award
  • Elite Graduate Student Award โ€“ Iran's National Elites Foundation

BSc. (Cum Laude)

Iran University of Science and Technology

2010 - 2014
  • GPA: 3.67/4.00