Sasan Tavakkol
I am a computer scientist working on graph algorithms and machine learning.
About Me
I am a Senior Software Engineer at the Algorithms & Optimization team of Google Research. Our mission is to build the most scalable library for graph algorithms and analysis and apply it to a multitude of Google products such as Search, YouTube, AdWords, Play, Maps. Previously, I was a tech lead on github.com/kartta-labs, an open source project from Google Research aiming to reconstruct a 4D map of the world. We launched Kartta Labs as re.city in 2020. The project was taken down in 2023. You can still see some screen-captured videos of our website in YouTube.
I did my PhD at University of Southern California, where I had the privilege to work with Patrick Lynett and Cyrus Shahabi. My PhD's outcome, Celeris, democratized high-performance computing in coastal engineering and is in use by thousands of researchers and engineers in over 50 countries. Its user manual is translated to Spanish, Farsi, and Italian by independent users.
EMPLOYMENT
Google AI
Senior Software Engineer, 2018 - Present
2021-Now: I work on scalable learning and graph theory as part of Google AI's Graph Mining team.
2018-2020: I was a lead in github.com/kartta-labs, an open-source project for unrendering historical maps and reconstructing 4D map of the world. We used artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing to tackle tasks such as 3D reconstruction, georectification, vectorization, etc. Have a look at it here: http://re.city.
Celeria Labs, LLC
Founder, 2020 - Present
Celeria Labs specializes in computational hydrodynamics. Its major product is Celeris, a simulation software for nearshore waves. Learn more at celerialabs.com.
Niantic, Inc.
Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2018
I was the very first Intern of Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go. I contributed to the launch of Ingress Prime as part of the core Unity3D engineering team.
Google
Software Engineering Intern, Winter 2018
As a member of the core engineering team of Code Jam, I significantly contributed to the launch of Code Jam 2018 competition on the new platform and received a shiny spot bonus for the “heroic launch”.
Google
Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2017
As a member of the Brand Lift team, I scaled up the ad quality measurement tools both in time and space, from spontaneous runs in specific regions to continuous monitoring in several countries.
EDUCATION
University of Southern California
Master of Science in Computer Science 2016
Thesis: Efficient Geospatial Crowdsourcing for Post-Disaster Decision Making [CONF. PAPER]
Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic)
Master of Science in Computational Hydraulics 2013
Thesis: Curvilinear Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics [JOURNAL PAPER]
Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic)
Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering 2010
Thesis: Shear Force Distribution in Open Channels [JOURNAL PAPER]
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Tavakkol, S., Son, S., & Lynett, P. (2021). Adaptive third order Adams-Bashforth time integration for extended Boussinesq equations. Computer Physics Communications, 265, 108006.
Tavakkol, S., Shahabi, C., Han, F., & Kiveris, R. (2020, December). Piaget: A Probabilistic Inference Approach for Geolocating Historical Buildings. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data) (pp. 971-978). IEEE.
Tavakkol, S., & Lynett, P. (2020). Celeris Base: An interactive and immersive Boussinesq-type nearshore wave simulation software. Computer Physics Communications, 248, 106966.
Tavakkol, S., Chiang, Y. Y., Waters, T., Han, F., Prasad, K., & Kiveris, R. (2019, November). Kartta labs: Unrendering historical maps. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on AI for Geographic Knowledge Discovery (pp. 48-51).
Alialy, R., Tavakkol, S., Tavakkol, E., Ghorbani-Aghbologhi, A., Ghaffarieh, A., Kim, S. H., & Shahabi, C. (2018). A Review on the Applications of Crowdsourcing in Human Pathology. Journal of Pathology Informatics, 9. [PDF]
Tavakkol, S., & Lynett, P. (2017). Celeris: A GPU-accelerated open source software with a Boussinesq-type wave solver for real-time interactive simulation and visualization. Computer Physics Communications, 217, 117-127. {PDF] [WEBSITE]
Tavakkol, S., Zarrati, A. R., & Khanpour, M. (2017). Curvilinear smoothed particle hydrodynamics. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, 83(2), 115-131. [PDF]
Tavakkol, S., To, H., Kim, S. H., Lynett, P., & Shahabi, C. (2016). An entropy-based framework for efficient post-disaster assessment based on crowdsourced data. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on the Use of GIS in Emergency Management (EM-GIS '16). ACM, San Francisco, CA, USA. [PDF]
Tavakkol, S., Alapour, F., Kazemian, A., Hasaninejad, A., Ghanbari, A., & Ramezanianpour, A. A. (2013). Prediction of lightweight concrete strength by categorized regression, MLR and ANN. Computers and Concrete, 12, 151-167. [PDF]