Education

B.A.,  Literature & Philosophy, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)
M.A., Communication Sciences & Journalism Studies, Concordia University (Montreal, Canada)
Ph.D., Information Science, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)

Research

Artificial intelligence, cognitive science, data science, cybersecurity, network analysis, communication, information science.

Alamir Novin was a member of one of the only Canadian research teams studying science media models using data science. He built software to facilitate these models and tested them on both scientists and science journalists. The experiments yielded positive results and he expanded his research into information science and human-computer interactions at the University of British Columbia. The focus of his research uses cognitive science and data science to experiment with computer systems and artificial intelligence. The systems range from coding languages to management systems.

Funded Research

Concordia Science Journalism Project - $20,000.
This grant was used to build software that networked scientists with science-journalist.

Anne Pitternick Award - $1000.
This grant was used to recruit participants for Novin's dissertation on how people learn and think about information while using search engines and the Internet and the cognitive biases that emerge.

Teaching

Using his experience as a data scientist alongside his research on cognition and computers, Alamir Novin teaches Data Science, Cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence. Novin applies established prior scholarly literature in the cognitive and learning sciences to his classrooms. These theories range from research on efficient note-taking practices to the complexities of group theory.

Recent Publications

Novin, A., (2025) The Role of Design and Understanding the User’s Context in Responsible AI,, Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology for SIG-AI.

Novin, A., Maslo, S, Makarus, B. (2025). Ethically-Centered AI in Information Seeking: Testing the Ethics Behind Using AI to Guide Health Information Seeking Behaviors, Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology for SIG-AI.

Novin, A., Maslo, S, Makarus, B. (2025). How AI Advises Young Women: How a Disembodied Chatbot’s “Diet Tips” Lacks Reassuring Context. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology

Lockett, A., Novin, A., Conway, L,  (2025). AI’s Usefulness in Assisting with Health Insurance Literacy. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology

Novin, A., & Towne, G. (2025). A Tool for Researching how AI Affects Information Seeking. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, 396–404. 

Mohammadi, E., Cai, Y., Novin, A., Vera, V., & Soltanmohammadi, E. (2025). Who is a scientist? Gender and racial biases in google vision AI. AI and Ethics, 1–18.

Hofman, D., Novin, A., Ghosh, S., & Mohammadi, E. (2024). AI for Library and Information Science ( AI4LIS ): Towards a Research Agenda. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 61(1), 767–769. 

Lockett, A., Zhang, J., Borji, S., Towne, G., Singh, S., Mobley‐Lee, J., Conway, L., McConnell, M., Stanton, A., Wilson, M., & Novin, A. (2024). Health Insurance Literacy Among Young Adults: The Role of Search Generative Experience and AI. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 61(1), 1005–1007.

Awards

• Best Presentation Award for ASIS&T SIG-Artificial Intelligence (SIG-AI 2021)
• Top 5 Finalist at ACM SIG-Documents (SIGDOC 2021) Student Research Competition
  
• Top 25 Finalist at ACM Computer-Human Interactions (CHI 2019) Student Research Competition
  
• Best Paper at ACM Conference for Human Information Interactions and Retrieval (CHIIR 2017)
  
• Best Paper Award for Design, User Experience, and Usability at Human-Computer Interactions International (Springer 2017)
• Second Best Paper at The American Educational Research Association SIG-Media Culture and Learning (AERA 2017)

Service

• USC's School of Information BSIS Committee Member
• USC's School of Information Curriculum Committee member