Bahareh Sarrafzadeh

About Bahareh Sarrafzadeh

I am a Principal Applied Scientist in the Office of Applied Research led by Jaime Teevan.My role broadly supports applied research by conducting original research in collaboration with various Experiences+Devices product groups. My research aims to enhance, align, and evaluate LLM-powered Interactive Systems, contributing to various Copilot scenarios like Outlook, Word, and M365 Copilot.Currently, I focus on personalizing and contextually adapting LLMs, utilizing established methods and theories from fields such as Information Retrieval, RecSys, Sociolinguistics, and AI-mediated Communication. Additionally, I leverage large-scale interaction signals to adapt these models to users’ preferences and scale the evaluation of LLM-powered Copilots.Previously, I worked on designing, improving and evaluating Human-AI interactive systems across various domains ranging from Web search, Goal-directed browsing, email and time intelligence and writing assistance.Before joining Microsoft, I earned my doctorate degree from the University of Waterloo. My PhD research focused on Characterizing and Supporting Exploratory Search Tasks through Alternative Representations of Information. During my academic journey, I engaged in fruitful collaborations with various applied research groups at LinkedIn, Google, and Microsoft. These experiences have strongly influenced my path as an applied researcher with a deep commitment to impactful research.

Experience

1. Principal Research Scientist

   Microsoft

   Dec 2024 — Present

Education

• Shahid Beheshti University

  BSc, Computer Engineering

  2003 — 2008

• York University

  Msc, Computer Science - NLP, Computational Linguistics, SMT

  2009 — 2011

• University of Waterloo

  PhD, Computer Science - Information Retrieval

  2011 — 2015

Skills

• Linguistics
• Natural Language Processing
• Software Development
• Latex
• Algorithm Design
• Java
• Information Extraction
• Semantic Web
• Machine Translation
• Perl
• Qualitative & Quantitative Research Methodologies
• Sentiment Analysis
• Algorithms
• Machine Learning
• Knowledge Representation
• Computational Linguistics
• Software Engineering
• Object Oriented Design
• C
• Programming
• Text Mining
• Artificial Intelligence
• Information Retrieval
• Pattern Recognition
• User Experience
• Data Visualization
• Computer Science