Nima Shahbazi
Nima Shahbazi | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Education | PhD Computer Science, M.Sc. Computer Engineering |
| Alma mater | York University at the Lassonde School of Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management |
| Occupation | AI scientist |
| Known for | Winning $1 million Zillow Prize |
Nima Shahbazi is a Canadian AI scientist who won the $1 million Zillow Prize by creating the most accurate home valuation algorithm that beat Zillow's Zestimate by over 13 percent.[1]
Education
Shahbazi earned his PhD in Computer Science from York University at the Lassonde School of Engineering, where he studied under the supervision of Dr. Jarek Gryz and Aijun An.[2] He earned a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2006 and completed entrepreneurship studies at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management in 2018.[2]
Career
Shahbazi is an expert LLMs, RAG, and MLOps, and holds a track record of delivering scalable machine learning products.[3] He is currently the President of Mindle.ai.[4]
Shahbazi is involved in algorithmic trading.[4] In 2019, he was the winner of the $1 million Zillow Prize, considered as the biggest computer science or AI competition in history.[5] He won the prize by creating the most accurate home valuation algorithm that beat Zillow's Zestimate by over 13 percent.[6]
In 2020, Shahbazi collaborated with Jarek Gryz on multiple research projects, including the paper titled "Futility of a Right to Explanation," presented at the EDBT/ICDT Workshops.[7][8]
In 2022, they co-authored the article "Upper bounds for can-tree and FP-tree," published in the Journal of Intelligent Information Systems.[9] [10]
Shahbazi is a Kaggle Competitions Grandmaster whose models consistently rank in the Global Top 10 on the platform.[11] He has achieved top placements in competitions including the Mercari Price Suggestion Challenge, Two Sigma Financial Modeling Challenge, and Home Depot Product Search Relevance.[12]
Shahbazi's speaking experience includes presentations at the Toronto Machine Learning Summit for Finance, Kaggle Days in Toronto, and RBC Disruptors.[4][3]
Awards
References
- ^ Rachel Metz,"Zillow's home-buying debacle shows how hard it is to use AI to value real estate". CNN. 9 November 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ a b "Lassonde PhD Graduate wins $1 Million Zillow Award, improves the Zestimate". lassonde.yorku.ca. 7 February 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ a b Kurt Schlosser,"Meet the 'Zillow Prize' winners who get $1M and bragging rights for beating the Zestimate". geekwire.com. 30 January 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ a b c "Nima Shahbazi President Mindle.ai". bigdata-toronto.com. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ David Schneider,"Winners Announced for the Zillow Prize". spectrum.ieee.org. 30 January 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ "Recent Lassonde PhD grad wins $1M Zillow Award, improves the Zestimate". educationnewscanada.com. 14 February 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ Gryz, Jarek; Shahbazi, Nima (2020). "Futility of a Right to Explanation". EDBT/ICDT Workshops: 72–75.
- ^ "dblp: Jarek Gryz". dblp.org. Retrieved 2025-05-11.
- ^ "Jarek Gryz - Home". Author DO Series. Retrieved 2025-05-11.
- ^ "dblp: Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, Volume 58". dblp.org. Retrieved 2025-05-11.
- ^ "Nima Shahbazi - Grandmaster". kaggle.com. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ "Lassonde grad and Zillow algorithm contest winner to give a guest lecture, March 25". yorku.ca. 18 March 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
- ^ Shane Dingman,"Toronto man shares $1-million prize for real estate price predictions". theglobeandmail.com. 7 January 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2025.