PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Nima Shahbazi

Nima Shahbazi is a Canadian AI scientist whose work spans data mining, predictive modeling, and applied AI products. He joined NextAI's inaugural class by February 2017 and was a co-founder of Deepnify with Krista Caldwell by July 2017; the food-logistics startup used machine learning to help reduce food waste. At York, he completed a computer science PhD on frequent itemsets and association rules in 2018 and coauthored a paper on machine learning for building maintenance. His three-person team won the $1 million Zillow Prize in 2019 with a home-value model that beat Zillow's benchmark by over 13 percent. In 2025, he led Collective[i]'s Data Science and Machine Learning team and spoke about AI trust at Canada AI Day; as of October 2026, he is President of Mindle.ai and builds OLVA, a live meeting assistant, with Hamed Shafiee and Ali Tezerjani.

Now at
Mindle.ai
Works
32
Citations
346
h-index
6
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By February 2017

    Selected for NextAI

    By February 2017, York selects him for the first class of the inaugural NextAI program, which supports AI inventions.

  2. By July 2017

    Co-founding Deepnify

    By July 2017, he is a co-founder of Deepnify with Krista Caldwell, a food-logistics startup that uses machine learning to help reduce food waste.

  3. 2018

    A York data-mining PhD

    He earns a computer science PhD at York's Lassonde School of Engineering in 2018. His doctoral work studies the discovery and effective use of frequent itemsets and association rules, with Jarek Gryz as co-supervisor.

  4. 2018

    Machine learning for maintenance

    He coauthors a 2018 paper on machine learning and BIM visualization for classifying maintenance issues and improving data collection.

  5. 2019

    A $1 million Zillow Prize

    In 2019, he and two teammates win the $1 million Zillow Prize with a home-value model that beats Zillow's benchmark by over 13 percent.

  6. 2025

    Collective[i] data science lead

    In 2025, he leads Collective[i]'s Data Science and Machine Learning team of more than 30 people. His work includes large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic architectures, and MLOps.

  7. 2025

    Speaking at Canada AI Day

    At Canada AI Day in 2025, he joins a public discussion about AI and trust as an invited speaker.

  8. As of October 2026

    President of Mindle.ai

    As of October 2026, he is a Canadian AI scientist and President of Mindle.ai, which develops OLVA, a real-time AI meeting assistant. He builds OLVA with Hamed Shafiee and Ali Tezerjani; the product offers live transcription, contextual answers and coaching, and meeting memory.

Career

  1. NowMindle.aiPresident
  2. 2025Collective[i]Data Science and Machine Learning Team Lead
  3. 2021–2026University of Illinois Chicago
  4. From 2017DeepnifyCo-founder

Education

  1. 2018York UniversityPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Representation Bias in Data: A Survey on Identification and Resolution Techniques2023 · ACM Computing Surveys · 132 citations
  2. Machine learning and BIM visualization for maintenance issue classification and enhanced data collection2018 · Advanced Engineering Informatics · 111 citations
  3. Identifying Insufficient Data Coverage for Ordinal Continuous-Valued Attributes2021 · ACM-SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data · 30 citations
  4. Through the Fairness Lens: Experimental Analysis and Evaluation of Entity Matching2023 · Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment · 22 citations
  5. Building FP-Tree on the Fly: Single-Pass Frequent Itemset Mining2016 · Lecture notes in computer science · 9 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Nima Shahbazi. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Illinois Chicago. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University of Illinois Chicago. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. 5 of the 25 people with the most-cited recent papers also lead on career citationsIncludes University of Illinois Chicago. We compare citations to 2023–2025 papers with career citations and h-index, after correcting reviewed publication-date errors: who leads, when they started and where they work.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Nima Shahbazi yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Lassonde PhD student selected for NextAI program yorku.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Can Humans Save AI? Only If We Act Now rbcis.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Nima Shahbazi, Ph.D. | Public Speaker mindle.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Data Mining Lab | York University dminer.eecs.yorku.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Lassonde grad and Zillow algorithm contest winner to give a guest lecture, March 25 yorku.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Lassonde PhD Graduate wins $1 Million Zillow Award, improves the Zestimate lassonde.yorku.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Speakers sites.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Building a More Trustworthy Future for AI: Connected Minds at Canada AI Day 2025 yorku.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Mindle.ai | Applied AI and Quantitative Machine Learning mindle.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Nima Shahbazi and the Intelligence Behind OLVA olva.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.