Amir H. Ghaseminejad

Canada

Tel: +1 604 618 9620

Email:  aghasemi@capilanou.ca

           ahghasem@sfu.ca

Nationality: Canadian                               June, 2018

EDUCATION

2007-2018 

Simon Fraser University, School of communication, Burnaby, Canada.

PhD, (Scheduled to be defended in August 2018)

Variables Relevant to Citizen Participatory Engagement in Technology-Mediated Democratic Systems

The mixed-mode study is to identify variables relevant to citizen participation in advanced technology-mediated democratic systems. Based on primary data from a comprehensive survey with 1048 questions, and in-depth interviews conducted by the author, associations between seven classes of participation and five groups of predictors are analyzed. To analyze the data, more than 15000 lines of R program has been written. Only non-parametric ordinal methods are used. Adapted from methods of big data analysis, false discovery rate criterion is used to deal with the issues of high dimensionality in ordinal analysis.  

1989  

Sharif University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tehran, Iran.

M.Sc. in Research Field of Electrical Engineering in Computer Hardware.

Software and hardware design and implementation research:
Design and Implementation of Test Equipment for VLSI Circuit Tester by Probe-Station in Prototype Stage of VLSI Production.
The research included study, design, and implementation of IBM PC interface card and test input output system and high-level user interface. The program was developed in MS Basic with graphic interface for on line monitoring of captured signals

Received top rank in “computer hardware graduate degree” entrance exam, graduated with best result in the field and ranked the third in the national PHD scholarship exam.

1986

Sharif University Of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tehran, Iran.

B.S. Degree in Electronic Engineering

First B.Sc. research: Graphic package for C language. (Graphic Input/Output System and C library for NEC 7220 graphic processor for NCR-DMV) 

Second B.Sc. research: Advanced graphic library for C language. (Graphic Input/Output System and C library for CPM86 NEC-APC graphic processor)

ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2000-Present

Capilano University, North Vancouver, Canada

Information Management Unit, Strategic Management Unit

School of Business, Faculty

-Probability and Statistics

-Operations management

-Business Information Systems

-Management Decision Making

-Empirical Research Methods in Communications

-Management

-Management of Information Systems

-Business Technology Disaster Recovery and Planning

-Advanced Web Design (E-Business Implementation)

-Business Computing (Windows and Office Applications)

-SQL Server 2000 System Administration

-Structured Programming Logic & Design

-Designing Windows 2000 Directory Services Infrastructure

-Windows 2000 Active Directory Infrastructure

-Windows 2000 Network Infrastructure

-Windows 2000 Server

-Windows 2000 Professional

-Upgrading Windows NT Support Skills to Windows 2000

-Visual Basic object-oriented programming

-TCP/IP

-Windows NT in Enterprise

-Network Essentials

-Computer Hardware & Operating Systems.

2007-Present

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

The Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies (ICURS), Researcher

-Design and development of Crime Analysis System (CASPR) decision support system and dashboard based on publicly available data to identify important statistics and trends within and between two or more police detachments, and in the province of British Columbia.
– Design and development of Crime Analysis System for PRIME

-Design and development CourBC Analytics decision support system and dashboard based on published court data, a research tool to facilitate repetitive queries and data mining on court data.

-Modeling the Dynamic Behavior of Justice System

-Trend analysis and modeling of “crime complexity and distribution in BC justice system”

2008-2015

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

School of communication, Sessional Instructor

-News Discourse and Political Communication

-Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Critical Perspectives

-News Media, the Public and Democracy

-Empirical Research Methods in Communication

2007-2010

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology, Researcher

-Research and modeling the impact of BC’s community broadband initiative.

2006-2009

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

Interdisciplinary Research in Mathematics and Computing,

Researcher

-Modeling Integrated Criminal Justice System

-Modeling the Demand for Healthcare

-A probabilistic Cellular Automata model for the spread of HIV by sharing contaminated needles in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

-Assessment of Cataract Surgery Wait Lists for British Columbia

 2002-2008

Langara College, Vancouver, Canada.

Business Administration Department and

Computing Science and Information Systems Department, Faculty

-Marketing

-Business Computer Applications

-Business Applications Systems Analysis (Accounting Information Systems)

-Advanced Application Development (Oracle 9i)

-Java Programming

-Database Management Systems

-Computer Networks

-Advanced Visual Basic Programming .NET

-C++ Programming

-Operating Systems I (Unix / Linux)

-Operating Systems II (Linux Networking and Security)

-Java Programming

-Introduction to Programming

2003-2004

Douglas College, Vancouver, Canada.

Computer Information Systems Department, Faculty

-C++ Programming

-Introduction to Computers

-Hardware Maintenance Concepts

2001-2004

British Columbia Institute of Technology, Vancouver, Canada.

School of Electrical and Electronic Technology, Faculty

-Understanding TCP/IP

-Unix Fundamentals (Linux+)

-Local Area Network I and II (Network +)

 1986

 Mardabad Satellite Remote Sensing Center, Tehran, Iran

Graphic Processors Researcher

-Studied diagnostic software and  image processing  

 1983 – 1990

Sharif University of Technology

Electrical Engineering Department, Instructor

-Computer Structure and Machine Language

-Logic Circuits and Switching Theory

-Electronics II

-Microprocessor and Logic Circuits Labs

INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

2001-2006

NewMorrow Technologies, North Vancouver, BC

Founder

 -Corporate Technical training of latest IT technologies

 -Consulting

2000-2001

Lucent Technologies, North Vancouver, BC

Quality Assurance and Support Engineer, and System Integrator

-Designed technical training courses for product and delivered them to the business partners and distributors.

-Supported customer sites, facing trial customers, pre-sales support and analyzing their needs and identifying requirements for new features and introducing them to R&D team.

-Participated in Quality Assurance for BackOffice based GroupWare Multimedia Interaction Manager Product.

-Developed the requirements for integration of product with CRM and Messaging systems.

-Developed Customer and Technical support web site while providing technical support for tier three support professionals.

-Prepared web-based training course material and product documentation.

-Performed product demonstrations to Lucent internal and external trade shows in Canada and United States with business development team to highlight technical aspects and responding technical sales issues

1989-1999

Rayanegan Farda Co. Ltd., Tehran, Iran

Managing Director, System Analyst, and Application Designer

-Analyzed, designed, and developed the total office automation for airline agencies and designed an integrated package for ticketing and accounting, reservation, tours, and automated sales report for various airlines.

-Analysed, designed and developed an integrated multilingual multiuser ERP package called Hesabyar. A sophisticated integrated accounting, payroll, inventory, invoicing, ordering, and CRM package using Visual FoxPro, C, Assembly

-Led a programming team of twelve for new releases and upgrades both from features point of view, to satisfy changing customer needs, and from software engine point of view using the most up to date technologies.

-Analysis, design, implementation and support of hospital reception and records system

-System software programmer in C and assembly languages to introduce the Parsisaz which was used widely for bilingual programming

-LAN, WAN, and PC to MAIN networking specialist, establishing networks of more than 100 airline agencies in 10 cities to communicate with a main frame in airport, using leased line modem communication, certified as official representative of Westinghouse Canada in Iran (later Northrop Grumman)

-Produced computers from SKD parts and imported computers from Interland Information Systems of Taiwan as its exclusive representative in Iran.

1985-1989

Tehran Urban and Suburban Railways – Tehran, Iran

Manager of Computer Department

Managed a group of programmers working on:

-Production, Utilization and Support Operations

-Establishing one of the first CAD-CAE sites and LAN workgroup departments in 80’s.

-Implemented the train traffic simulation -Designed tools for structure department

-Organized an analysis and design team of M.I.S. of Tehran Metro focusing on accounting, inventory, and payroll which developed respective applications

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

2018

Ghaseminejad, Amir H. (2018) A Non-Parametric Maximum for Number of Selected Features: Objective Optima for FDR and Significance Threshold with Application to Ordinal Survey Analysis. Journal of Big Data 5 (1): 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-018-0128-5.

2017

Linning, Shannon J., Martin A. Andresen, Amir H. Ghaseminejad, and Paul J. Brantingham. (2017) “Crime Seasonality across Multiple Jurisdictions in British Columbia, Canada.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, January. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2015.E31.

2014

Ghaseminejad, Amir H. (2014). Society, Technology, Product, and Responsibility: A Dynamic Feedback Systems Perspective. International Journal of Technology Knowledge and Society, 9(4), 225-241.

There is an organic feedback relationship between society and technologies in it. The paper defines technology as knowledge about an intelligent utilization of science in an envisioned composition of natural resources, artifacts, techniques, procedures, or methods of doing things in a system that is designed to produce certain class of goods, to make specific types of tools, to provide certain forms of services, or to accomplish certain sorts of tasks. We should demarcate between the products and artifacts; and the technological capital accumulated in a society. The products are made by mobilization of social resources to utilize technologies, and have more specific intentions inscribed, moreover they can have disruptive consequences. Besides, the artifacts developed in one society can have expected and unexpected effects on other societies. In resulting dynamical system, artifacts are constructed and determined within societies, and as organic members of the social systems are also determinants of the trajectory of those societies; but at the same time, they can act as exogenous determinants for the trajectory of other societies. We can use process modeling for these feedback relations, and use this established language to avoid statements that may be confusing the agency of artifacts in its social scientific sense, with their accountability in moral sense. Referring to science and technology as agents may be useful because it reminds us to include them in the network of the actors, but when a generalized symmetry leads to personification of constructs or artifacts, it is a slippery road which may also lead to forgetting that any criticism of non-humans is not fruitful.

2014

Andrew A Reid, Graham Farrell, Shihong Mu, Wolfgang Richter, Amir Ghaseminejad, Paul J Brantingham a. (2014). A matrix of measures of court caseload. The Canadian Bar Review, 92(1).

2012

Ghaseminejad, A. H., Brantingham, P., & Brantingham, P. (2012). Distribution of event complexity in the British Columbia court system an analysis based on the CourBC analytical system. Security Informatics, 1(1), 13. doi:10.1186/2190-8532-1-13

2010

Ghaseminejad, A. H., & Brantingham, P. (2010). An executive decision support system for longitudinal statistical analysis of crime and law enforcement performance crime analysis system pacific region (CASPR). Proceedings from: IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) (pp. 1–6). doi:10.1109/ISI.2010.5484784

2010

IRMACS Complex Systems Modelling Group. (2010). Modelling in Healthcare, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2010.

2009

Patent Application: Ghaseminejad, T. A. H. (2009). Decision making independent of irrelevant alternatives. Patent Application WO2009065211 A128-May-2009

2008

A. Alimadad, P. Brantingham, P. Brantingham, V. Dabbaghian-Abdoly, R. Ferguson, E. Fowler, A. H. Ghaseminejad, C. Giles, J. Li, N. Pollard, A. R. Rutherford, and A. van der Waall. (2008). Using Varieties of Simulation Modelling for Criminal Justice System Analysis. In Artificial Crime Analysis Systems: Using Computer Simulations and Geographic Information Systems, John Eck and Lin Lui (eds.), Idea Group Inc., Hershey, PA, pp 372-412, 2008.

2007

Ghaseminejad, Amir H. (2007). An Informatics Theory of Effective Democracy: Democratic Wisdom Hypothesis and General Relativity of Democracy. International Journal of Technology Knowledge and Society, 2(7), 91–106.

REPORTS

2016

Fact Sheets on trends in court system and criminal events in British Columbia

The Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies (ICURS)

2009

Ghaseminejad, Amir H. (2009), A Model for Inter-organizational Communications for Information Sharing, prepared for the office of chief information officer.

2007

A. Alimadad, A. H. Ghaseminejad, W. Hare, J. Li, S. Mitrovic-Minic, A. R. Rutherford, K. Vásárhelyi, and L. Vertesi. (2007). Assessment of Cataract Surgery Wait Lists for British Columbia. Report for the British Columbia Ministry of Health.

2007

V. Dabbaghian-Abdoly, E. Fowler, A. H. Ghaseminejad, C. Giles, and Alexa van der Waall. (2007). Modelling and Simulation of the Criminal Justice System. Report for the RCMP.

2006

With Complex systems Modeling Group, Simon Fraser University

Interdisciplinary Research In mathematics and Computing (IRMACS)

“Modeling the Demand for Healthcare“. Monograph prepared for the British Columbia Ministry of Health, 193 pages, September 2006.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2015

Western Society of Criminology Conference,

Vancouver, Canada

Crime Basket Analysis

Understanding the Attributes of Events Criminal Justice System Deals With

2014

Western Canada Graduate Conference of Critical Studies

Society, Technology, Product, Change, Responsibility: An Organic Feedback Perspective

2013

2013

Canadian Communication Association Conference

University of Victoria,  Victoria, BC, Canada

Society, Technology, Product, Change, Responsibility: An Organic Feedback Perspective

Ninth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society

UBC Robson Square, Vancouver, Canada

Society, Technology, Product; Change, Responsibility: An Organic Feedback Perspective

2010

Society for Social Studies of Science,

2010 Annual Meeting

Tokyo, Japan

“Science and Technology, Agents Who Cannot be Held Responsible

Risks of Loose Definitions and Personifications”

2010

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship Graduate Student Conference,

Québec City, Canada

“Collective Decision Making While Averting the Impact of Irrelevant Alternatives

Sincere Voting Using Collaborative Methods”

2010

The IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics

Vancouver, Canada

Ghaseminejad, A.H. and Brantingham, P.J.  “An Executive Decision Support System For Longitudinal Statistical Analysis of Crime and Law Enforcement Performance. “

2010

BC ICT Summit

Vancouver, Canada

“Recent research on rural connectivity”

2010

Public Choice Society

Monterey, California, USA

“Collective Decision Making with Explicit Averting from the Impact of Irrelevant Alternatives”

2010

On the Edge : Pushing Boundaries in Social Research Student Conference

UBC sociology graduate student conference

Toward a Science for Understanding the Complexities of Modern World-System: Reality, Uncertainty, the Truth and the Good

2009

BC ICT Summit

Coast Plaza Hotel, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada, 2009

Foundation for the Future Research Project

2009

International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society

Huntsville, Alabama, USA

A Mythology of Media Effects: Our Path Toward Comprehensive Models

2009

Union for Democratic Communications (UDC) Conference

Buffalo, New York, USA

An Informatics Theory of Democratic Journalism.

2008

Canadian Communication Association Conference

University of British Columbia,  Vancouver, BC, Canada

A Methodology for Studying the Impact of Providing Broadband Internet Technology to Remote and Rural Communities

2007

International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society

Cambridge University, United Kingdom

“Democracy and the tyranny of Weak Majority: Do Modern Technologies
Facilitate Better Decision Making Systems?”

2006

International Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis Conference, Chilliwack, B. C., Canada.

A. Alimadad, P. Borwein, P. Brantingham, P. Brantingham, V. Dabbaghian-Abdoly, R. Ferguson, E. Fowler, A. H. Ghaseminejad, C. Giles, J. Li, N. Pollard, A. R. Rutherford, and A. van der Waall: Simulation of the Criminal Justice System for Policy Analysis: The Complementary Strengths of Discrete Event Models and System Dynamics Models.

2006

Crime Reduction Initiative – Division Management Update, RCMP E Division, British Columbia, Oct. 19, 2006.

A. Alimadad, P. Brantingham, P. Brantingham, V. Dabbaghian-Abdoly, R. Ferguson, E. Fowler, A. H. Ghaseminejad, C. Giles, J. Li, N. Pollard, A. R. Rutherford, and A. van der Waall: Using Simulation Modelling for Analyzing the Criminal Justice System in British Columbia.

2006

IBM Experts Meeting, IRMACS, Nov. 2006.

V. Dabbaghian-Abdoly, E. Fowler, A. H. Ghaseminejad, C. Giles, and A. van der Waall: Simulation of the Criminal Justice System for Policy Analysis.

2006

Symposium on Technology and Citizenship

McGill University, Montreal , Canada

“An Informatics Theory of Effective Democracy”, the Effect of Information Dissemination by Modern Technologies on Democracy”

Published in International Journal of Technology Knowledge and Society

1988-1990

Sharif University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

Tehran, Iran.

Presented Seminars on:

 Parallel Processing

 Automatic VLSI Layout Generation, Silicon Compilation

 VT-CSMA Industrial Protocol for Local Area Computer Network.

CERTIFICATES 

1997

Microsoft

Vancouver, New York, Tehran, Dubai

Microsoft Certified Database Administrator, SQL 2000

Microsoft Certified System Engineer, Windows 2000  

Microsoft Certified System Engineer, Windows NT 4.0

Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, Windows 2000

Early Achiever Windows 2000 Certification Award                                                                           

Microsoft Certified Professional + Internet

Microsoft Certified Professional, Windows 95, 98

2001  

CompTIA

Vancouver, Canada  

i-Net+ Certified Professional

Network+ Certified Professional

A+ Certified Professional  

2000  

Capilano University, North Vancouver, Canada

Responsive Teaching Techniques Certificate

1993

Westinghouse Canada (Northrop Grumman)

Burlington , Ontario, Canada    

Affinity Installation and support Certificate

Certified for Affinity Gateway Card Installation and Support.  

Workshops

2013

International Joint Summer School

Communication and Global Power Shifts; Vancouver, Canada

Hosted by:

The School of Communication, Simon Fraser University

The National Centre for Radio & Television Studies, Communication University of China

The Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster

The School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Awards

2013

Graduate Fellowship (PhD) Award

2010

Graduate Fellowship (PhD) Award

Skills

Public Opinion Research (5 years)

Modeling Complex Social Systems (10 years)

High Dimensional Data Analysis (4 years)

Big Data Analysis (10+ years)

Data Visualization (10+ years)

R Programming (4 years)

C# (7 years)

SQL (10+ years)

DB2 (10+ years)

Oracle Database (3 years)

Microsoft SQL Server (4+ years)

Visual Basic and VBA(10+ years)

Java Script (10+ years)

Statistical Analysis (10+ years)

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS

Variables Influencing Citizen Engagement in Technologically Mediated Democratic Systems.

Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Collective Decision Making and Control,

Process Modeling of Complex Social Systems,

Philosophy of Science and Technology,

Technology and Society interrelationships,

Systems Analysis, Big Data and Information Management.

PERSONAL INTERESTS

Tennis, Ping Pong, Volleyball, Light and Classical Music