Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani

Senior Applied Scientist at AWS AI

Behrooz is a Senior Applied Scientist at AWS AI working on Next Gen Developer Experience. He was a key player in the launch of two groundbreaking Generative AI products: AWS DevOps Guru and Amazon Q Code Transformation. His research interests include Reinforcement Learning and Large Language Models. He obtained his PhD from the University of Grenoble in 2015. He has published more than 40 papers in top-ranked international conferences and journals including VLDB, SIGMOD, CIKM, TKDE, and CHI.

Publications

See also: DBLP, Google Scholar

  1. Model Reusability in Reinforcement Learning
    Sepideh Nikookar, Sohrab Namazi Nia, Senjuti Basu Roy, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani. VLDB Journal 2025
  2. Enhancing Language Model Agents using Diversity of Thoughts
    Vijay Lingam, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sujay Sanghavi, Gaurav Gupta, Sayan Ghosh, Linbo Liu, Jun Huan, Anoop Deoras. ICLR 2025
  3. MigrationBench: Repository-Level Code Migration Benchmark from Java 8
    Linbo Liu, Xinle Liu, Qiang Zhou, Lin Chen, Yihan Liu, Hoan Nguyen, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Xi Shen, Jun Huan, Omer Tripp, Anoop Deoras. ArXiv 2025
  4. Evaluating Human-AI Partnership for LLM-based Code Migration
    Ishaani M, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Anmol Anubhai. CHI 2024 Late Breaking Works
  5. Automated Evaluation of Retrieval-Augmented Language Models with Task-Specific Exam Generation
    Gauthier Guinet, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Anoop Deoras, Laurent Callot. ICML 2024
  6. Reasoning and Planning with Large Language Models in Code Development
    Hao Ding, Ziwei Fan, Ingo Gühring, Gaurav Gupta, Wooseok Ha, Jun Huan, Linbo Liu, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Shiqi Wang, Hao Zhou. KDD 2024
  7. Guided Text-based Item Exploration
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Aurelien Personnaz, Sihem Amer-Yahia.
    International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2022
  8. What is Your Current Mindset? Categories for a satisficing exploration of mobile point-of-interest recommendations
    Sruthi Viswanathan, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Jean-Michel Renders.
    International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI) 2022
  9. Interactive and Explainable Point-of-Interest Recommendation using Look-alike Groups
    [bibtex] [arXiv] [video] Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sruthi Viswanathan, Jean-Michel Renders.
    International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL) 2020
  10. Guided Exploration of User Group (awarded as the best research paper) [video]
    Mariia Seleznova, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Eric Simon.
    International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB) 2020
    Also presented in French Conference on Management of Data (BDA) 2020
  11. Designing Ambient Wanderer: Mobile Recommendations for Urban Exploration [video]
    Sruthi Viswanathan, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Adrien Bruyat, Antonietta Maria Grasso.
    ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2020
  12. Hybrid Wizard of Oz: Concept Testing a Recommender System [bibtex]
    Sruthi Viswanathan, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Adrien Bruyat, Frederic Roulland, Antonietta Maria Grasso. CHI 2020 Late Breaking Works
  13. GroupTravel: Customizing Travel Packages for Groups [bibtex]
    Sihem Amer-Yahia, Shady Elbassuoni, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Ria M. Borromeo, Mehrdad Farokhnejad. International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT) 2019
  14. Cohort Representation and Exploration (awarded as the best research paper) [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Laks V.S. Lakshmanan.
    IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA) 2018
    Also presented in French Conference on Management of Data (BDA) 2019
  15. Characterizing Driving Context from Driver Behavior [bibtex]
    Sobhan Moosavi, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, R. Bruce Craig (Nationwide insurance), Arnab Nandi and Rajiv Ramnath
    International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL) 2017 (acceptance rate: 25%)
  16. Online Lattice-based Abstraction of User Groups [bibtex] [video]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia
    International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA) 2017 (acceptance rate: 22%)
  17. Multi-Objective User Group Discovery on the Social Web [bitex] [video]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Pierre-Francois Dutot and Denis Trystram
    The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML/PKDD) 2016
  18. Interactive User Group Analysis [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Alexandre Termier
    International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2015 (acceptance rate: 17.9%)
  19. Group Recommendation with Temporal Affinities [bitex]
    Sihem Amer-Yahia, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Senjuti Basu Roy and Nafiseh Shabib
    International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT) 2015 (acceptance rate: ~19.5%)
  20. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Activities in Database Conferences: A 2022 Report [bibtex]
    Several authors
    SIGMOD Record, Volume 52
  21. Cohort Analytics: Efficiency and Applicability [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, and Laks V.S. Lakshmanan
    The International Journal on Very Large Data Bases (VLDBJ), 2020
  22. Visual Exploration of Rating Datasets and User Groups [bibtex]
    Fabian Colque Zegarra, Juan C. Carbajal, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Viviane Moreira, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Joao L. D. Comba
    The International Journal of Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS), December 2019 (IF: 5.768)
  23. User Group Analytics: Survey and Research Opportunities [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia
    IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2019 (IF: 2.775)
  24. OntoSIDES: Ontology-based student progress monitoring on the national evaluation system of French Medical Schools [bibtex]
    Olivier Palombi, Fabrice Jouanot, Nafissetou Nziengam, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Marie-Christine Rousset, Adam Sanchez
    Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 2019 (IF: 2.879 in 2017)
  25. User Group Analytics: Hypothesis Generation and Exploratory Analysis of User Data [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, and Ria Mae Borromeo
    The International Journal on Very Large Data Bases (VLDBJ), 2018 (IF: 1.744 in 2015)
  26. PGLCM: Efficient Parallel Mining of Closed Frequent Gradual Itemsets [bitex]
    Trong Dinh Thac Do, Alexandre Termier, Anne Laurent, Benjamin Negrevergne, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, and Sihem Amer-Yahia
    Journal of Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS), 2014 (IF: 2.2 in 2011)
  27. Exploration of Interesting Dense Regions on Spatial Data [bibtex] [video]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Plácido A. Souza Neto, Francisco B. Silva Júnior and Felipe F. Pontes. International workshop of Big Mobility Data Analytics co-located with EDBT 2020
  28. SAGE: Interactive State-aware Point-of-Interest Recommendation [video]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sruthi Viswanathan, Frederic Roulland, Jean-Michel Renders. SUM'20 workshop (State-based User Modeling) co-located with WSDM 2020
  29. UserDEV: A Mixed-Initiative System for User Group Analytics [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Eric Simon (SAP Paris), Fabian Colque Zegarra, João L. D. Comba, Viviane Moreira. Workshop on Human-In-the-Loop Data Analytics (HILDA) co-located with SIGMOD 2019
  30. Augmented Therapy with Online Support Groups [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani. International Workshop on Data Management and Analytics for Medicine and Healthcare (DMAH) in conjunction with VLDB 2018
  31. Trajectory Annotation by Discovering Driving Patterns [bibtex]
    Sobhan Moosavi, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani and Rajiv Ramnath
    International Workshop on Smart Cities and Urban Analytics (UrbanGIS), 2017
  32. GeoGuide: An Interactive Guidance Approach for Spatial Data [bibtex] [video]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Placido A. Souza Neto, Felipe Pontes, Francisco Bento
    International Workshop on Data Analytics Solutions for Real-life Applications (DARLI-AP) in conjunction with Smart Data, June 2017
  33. Towards a Framework for Semantic Exploration of Frequent Patterns [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Alexandre Termier, Aurelie Bertaux, Eric Gaussier and Marie-Christine Rousset
    International Workshop on Information Management in Mobile Applications in conjunction with VLDB, August 2013
  34. Interactive Generation and Customization of Travel Packages for Individuals and Groups (demo) [bibtex]
    Sihem Amer-Yahia, Ria M. Borromeo, Shady Elbassuoni, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani and Sruthi Viswanathan. ACM IUI 2020
  35. COVIZ: A System for Visual Formation and Exploration of Patient Cohorts (demo)
    [bibtex] [video]
    Cicero A. L. Pahins, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sihem Amer-Yahia, Valerie Siroux, Jean-Louis Pepin, Jean-Christian Borel, Joao L. D. Comba. International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB) 2019
  36. Exploration of User Groups in VEXUS (demo) [bibtex] [arXiv] [poster]
    Sihem Amer-Yahia, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Joao Comba, Viviane Moreira, Fabian Colque Zegarra. International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) 2018
  37. Interactive Analysis of Aviation Data (demo) [bibtex] [video] [patent application]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Arnab Nandi, Nicholas Meyer, Dalton Flanagan and Seth Young
    International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) 2017 (Also presented in Techlife Columbus)
  38. Interactive Analytics in Social Media [bibtex]
    Sihem Amer-Yahia, Alexandre Termier, and Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani
    Encyclopedia of Database Systems (Edition 2018)
  39. Social Media Analytics [bibtex]
    Sihem Amer-Yahia, Alexandre Termier, and Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani
    Encyclopedia of Database Systems (Edition 2018)

Patents

  1. Apparatus and Method for Interactive Analysis of Aviation Data
    Seth Young, Arnab Nandi, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani. US Patent US20190102407A1
  2. Ambient Point-of-Interest Recommendation using Look-Alike Groups
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, Sruthi Viswanathan, Frederic Roulland.
    European Patent Application No. 19 306 522.4
  3. Ambient Mindsets: Categories for Mobile Point-of-Interest Recommendation and Exploration
    Sruthi Viswanathan, Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani, and Jean-Michel Renders.
    European Patent Application

Theses

Talks and Tutorials

Jump to: Talks, Tutorials

Talks

  1. LLM Agents for Code Development
    The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (March, 2025)
  2. Optimal Interactions with LLMs
    Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (December, 2023)
  3. Interaction Learning
    The University of British Columbia (November 18, 2022)
  4. Enabling Interactivity between Human and Artificial Intelligence
    2nd Workshop on Smart Data Integration and Processing on Service Based Environments (STRAPS 2020) in conjunction with ICSOC 2020 (December 14, 2020)
  5. Visual Formation and Comparison of Patient Cohorts
    HPE Innovation Day, Transfo Festival (January 25, 2019)
  6. Representation and Exploration of Patient Cohorts [video]
    HPE Innovation Day, Transfo Festival (January 25, 2019), Global Challenges Science Week (Environment, Aging and Future Medicine: Common Challenges for Society) in University of Grenoble Alpes (June 3, 2019), Technische Universität (TU) Dortmund, Germany (February 21, 2019), MaDICS Workshop on Big Data and Data Science in Strasbourg (November 20,2018), Center for Engineering and Health in Mines Engineering School of Saint-Etienne (November 12, 2018), Artificial Intelligence Committee of Lyon Hospital (October 22, 2018), The 5th International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (October 2, 2018), Workshop on Machine Learning and Statistics for Medical Data (September 21, 2018), and AI Health Workshop in FADEX Doctoral Exchange Program (June 27, 2018)
  7. Interactivity on Groups: Applications to Spatiotemporal Datasets
    NAVER LABS Europe (NLE), Meylan, France (September 2018)
  8. Bridging the Gap between User Data Exploration and Information Visualization
    Azad University of Mashhad, Iran (December 2017), and Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (October 2017)
  9. Interactive Analysis of Spatiotemporal Data [video]
    Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran (December 2017), Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (October 2017), Research Commons @ The Ohio State University (May 2017), Coordination meeting with FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) Officials (April 2016)
  10. Tools for Collaborative Research [video]
    International Postdoctoral Association at The Ohio State University (November 2016)

Tutorials

  1. Data-Informed Interaction Learning
    The Web Conference, 2023
  2. Towards Automating Interactions with Reinforcement Learning
    Amazon Machine Learning Conference 2022 [internal event]
  3. Exploratory Analysis of User Data [link to the slides] (6-hour hands-on tutorial)
    RAIS summer school, 17-19 May 2021
  4. Data Pipelines for User Group Analytics
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani and Sihem Amer-Yahia
    1. International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD) 2019
    2. French Conference on Management of Data (BDA) 2019
  5. User Group Analytics: Discovery, Exploration and Visualization [bibtex]
    Behrooz Omidvar-Tehrani and Sihem Amer-Yahia
    Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2018

Chairing and Reviews

  • Chairing: Program co-chair of HILDA 2023 and HILDA 2024 workshops, Program co-chair of the International Workshop on Explainability for Trustworthy ML Pipelines (ETMLP 2020) co-located with EDBT 2020, Session chair at DEXA 2017, Demo session chair at SIGMOD 2020
  • Journal reviews: The International Journal on Very Large Data Bases (2021), Elsevier Journal of Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Management Vol. 9 (AKDM-9), Elsevier Information Systems (2017-2020), TKDE (2015-2016), DAMI (2016)
  • Grant reviews: The Israel Science Foundation (The Personal Research Grants)
  • PC membership and conference reviews: CIKM Demo 2024 (Senior PC Member), SIGMOD 2023, The Web Conference (TWC) 2022, BigVis 2020, HILDA 2020, SIGMOD 2020 (Demo Track), EDBT 2020, VIS 2019, CIKM 2016, ICDE 2017, SDM 2013-2014, ICDM 2013, VLDB 2016-2017, BDA 2017 (Demo Track), AAAI 2018
  • Forum reviews: Undergraduate Research Student Forum at The Ohio State University (Fall 2016)

Personal

My Favorites

  • Classical musics: My passion and excitement in classical music go toward emotionally rich, melodically expressive, and vividly orchestrated works. I’m drawn to the drama and lyricism of the Romantic era, composers like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, and Bizet, whose music feels alive with longing, color, and beauty. I find joy in pieces that tell a story through sweeping melodies and rhythmic momentum. Top-5 favorite pieces are: (1) Carmen Suite no. 2 by Georges Bizet (1875), (2) Gymnopédies by Eric Satie (1888), (3) Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov (1888), (4) Quartet Movement for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello in A Minor by Gustav Mahler (1876), (5) La mer by Claude Debussy (1901)
  • Top-5 Favorite pop musics: (1) Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, (2) Ameno by Era musical (lyrics written by Eric Lévi in pseudo-latin), (3) Requiem for a Dream by Clint Mansell (performed by Kronos Quartet in 2000 to accompany the Darren Aronofsky's film with the same title), (4) Splashing water in the streets by Rashid Behbudov (an Azerbaijani singer and actor, passed away in 1989), (5) Sweet Dreams are Made of This by Eurythmics (British pop duo)
  • Top-5 Favorite books (complete list): (1) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969), (2) The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925), (3) Free Will by Sam Harris (2012), (4) Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein (2019), (5) A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine (2008)
  • Top-5 Favorite movies (complete list): (1) Shutter Island by Martin Scorsese (2010), (2) La Vie En Rose by Olivier Dahan (2007), (3) Scent of a Woman by Martin Brest (1992), (4) Mother! by Darren Aronofsky (2017), (5) Black Mirror: Bandersnatch by David Slade (2018), (6) A Star Is Born by Bradley Cooper (2018)
  • Top-5 Favorite paintings: (1) The Avenue in the Rain by Childe Hassam in Impressionism (1917), (2) The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso in Cubism (1937), (3) The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh in Impressionism (1889), (4) The Scream by Edvard Munch in Expressionism (1893), (5) The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí in Surrealism (1931)

Places I've been