Ali Lesani

Ali Lesani

Ali Lesani

AI Researcher

PhD Candidate at CViSS Lab

Hi, I'm Ali!

I am a PhD researcher at the CViSS Lab, University of Waterloo, supervised by Dr. Chul Min Yeum. My research focuses on interpretable visual understanding, spatio-temporal change detection, and multimodal reasoning via vision–language models (VLMs) to automate infrastructure inspection workflows and generate actionable, evidence-grounded reports.

Previously, as an AI Scientist at Kisoji Biotechnology, I developed scalable AI pipelines for computational antibody discovery. I built a modular protein language model (pLM) framework to extract protein sequence representations and cluster immune repertoires, enabling the prioritization of promising antibody candidates from millions of immune response sequences based on their similarity to reference antibodies for wet-lab validation.

Through Mitacs-supported projects, I have collaborated with industry partners including Rogers Communications, RBC Royal Bank, and NAV Canada to develop and deploy applied AI solutions for real-world engineering challenges.

Outside of research, I enjoy playing soccer, following professional football, and playing snooker. If our interests align, feel free to reach out—I would love to connect!

KisoJi Biotechnology CViSS Lab University of Waterloo NAV Canada
Rogers Communications Sharif University of Technology INSURER Lab Sahand University of Technology

News

  • [Jun 2026] Started a new role as an AI Scientist at KisoJi Biotechnology Inc.
  • [Mar 2026] Became a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo.
  • [Jan 2026] Our paper is accepted at ISPRS 2026.
  • [Aug 2025] Joined KisoJi Biotechnology Inc. as an AI Engineer.
  • [May 2025] My teammate, Fuad Hassan, and I won first place in the 2025 NSF NHERI GSC Data Challenge.
  • [Mar 2025] Our paper is accepted at COBEE 2025.
  • [Dec 2024] Attended NeurIPS 2024 in Vancouver.
  • [Jun 2024] Our paper is accepted at WCEE 2024.
  • [Oct 2023] Attended the Multi-Hazard Risk and Resilience Workshop at Western University.

Timeline & Experience

Sep 2023 – Present
Applied AI Scientist (PhD Candidate) | CViSS Lab, University of Waterloo
Vision-Language Models, Supervised Fine-Tuning, Temporal Change Understanding
Aug 2025 – Sep 2026
AI Scientist / Engineer | KisoJi Biotechnology
Antibody Representation, Protein Language Models, Agentic RAG, NL2SQL, AWS
Jan 2026 – May 2026
AI Research Intern – Mitacs Accelerate | NAV Canada
Small-Object Detection, Kalman Filter, Video Analytics, Runway Surveillance
Jan 2025 – Aug 2025
NLP Specialist (RA) | Office of Associate Dean, University of Waterloo
Encoder-only LMs, Sentence Transformers, KNN Classification, NLP Pipelines
Sep 2024 – Dec 2024
AI Research Intern – Mitacs Accelerate | Rogers Communications
Zero-Shot Segmentation, Monocular Depth Estimation, Object Detection, SAM
Sep 2020 – May 2023
Software Developer & Graduate Researcher | INSURER Lab, Sharif University of Technology
C++ / Qt, Agent-Based Modeling, Infrastructure Simulation, Probabilistic Analysis

Publications

SDG-SAM publication thumbnail

Saliency-Depth Conditioning for Zero-Shot Segmentation of Communication-Tower Components in Cluttered UAV Imagery

Ali Lesani, Chul Min Yeum, Su-Min Kang
Submitted to AUTOCON, 2026.
arXiv Code BibTeX
Graph-Attention Network publication

Graph-Attention Network for Spatially-Aware Post-Hurricane Building Damage Assessment from UAV Imagery

Fuad Hasan, Chul Min Yeum, Ali Lesani, Rodrigo Costa
ISPRS, 2026
Paper BibTeX
Knowledge-augmented GPT publication thumbnail

A Knowledge-Augmented GPT for Efficient Data Collection in Home Energy Audits

Shih-Chi Liu, Kay Han, Ali Lesani, Chul Min Yeum, Graham Watt, Seungjae Lee
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Building Energy and Environment (COBEE 2025)
PDF
Housing Recovery publication thumbnail

Simulating Housing Recovery Challenges Due to Post-disaster Repair Cost Increases

Ali Lesani, Alireza Ahmadi, Rodrigo Costa
Proceedings of the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (WCEE 2024)
PDF Proceedings BibTeX

Awards and Honors

Scholarships:

  • UW Graduate Scholarship, University of Waterloo
  • International Doctoral Student Award, University of Waterloo
  • Graduate Research Studentship, University of Waterloo
  • National Elites Foundation Award, Sharif University of Technology

Awards:

  • Won 1st Place in 2025 NSF NHERI GSC Data Challenge, Awarded for top AI research in natural hazards, 2025
  • Ranked 1st Among More than 44 Peer B.Sc. Students, Sahand University of Technology, 2019
  • Ranked 1st, 24th Regional Scientific Olympiad in Civil Engineering, 2019
  • Top Undergraduate Student in Department, Recognized for academic excellence, 2016 and 2017
  • Member of the Center of Exceptional Talents, Sahand University of Technology, 2015-2019