Armin Bazarjani

I’m a PhD student working with Payam Piray at the University of Southern California, where I also earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. Before starting my PhD I was a research engineer at Honda Research Institute, working on representation learning for self-driving cars.

Research interests

My research covers topics in both neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI). Broadly, I am interested in how we can construct rich representations of the environment, both bioloigical and artificial, that allow for a myriad of flexible behaviors in an ever changing world.

On the neuro side I investigate the principles behind the brain’s construction of a “cognitive map,” or world model. I aim to understand how the brain can represent its environment efficiently enough to support flexible navigation and I am particularly interested in how that representation gets updated when the environment changes.

On the AI side I attempt to apply this work back to machine learning and deep learning, using inspiration from the brain to develop models that learn more flexible representations of the world that can be updated continuously.

Elsewhere

Outside of research my interests are mostly outdoors: hiking, running, skateboarding, etc. I also very much enjoy coffee touring (a typical LA coffee snob) and reading. Basically, when I’m not doing research, spending time with my dog, or getting caffeinated, I try to be outside.