Project Lead

Prof. Amir Albadvi

Amir is the Project Lead and Principal Investigator for URSA project is a dedicated Professor of Information Systems with nearly 30 years of experience bridging academia and industry. After earning his PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE), he has supervised 167 MSc and PhD students, co-authoring over 250 publications with them. His expertise in complexity science and complex adaptive systems modeling fuels his drive to find innovative solutions to real-world challenges. 

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Principal Investigator, MOSAIC I

Dr. Arifusalam Shaikh

Arif has a PhD in Management Science from Kent Business School (University of Kent, Canterbury, UK) with a background in Industrial Engineering. He worked as a business school faculty member in Saudi Arabia, Canada and China. Dr. Shaikh currently works as an Associate Professor at University Canada West, Vancouver, Canada. He is passionate about innovation and sustainability, and has research interests in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, translational research, urban resilience, and sustainability. 

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Principal Investigator, MOSAIC II

Dr. Aigerim Shilibekova

Aigerim is an Associate Professor at University Canada West (UCW). She completed her postdoctoral research at Harvard University, focusing on international security strategies. Currently pursuing a second PhD in Educational Technology and Learning Design at Simon Fraser University (SFU), she researches AI-powered inclusive instructional design for future-ready faculty and workforce development. Dr. Shilibekova speaks on AI in education, lifelong learning and consults enterprises on capacity building, helping professionals and organizations develop adaptive strategies to thrive in an evolving world.

Principal Investigator, MOSAIC III

Dr. Abedeh Gholidoust

Abedeh has a Master and Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Tehran Poly Technic University. She has worked as a Research Engineer with the National Petrochemical Company of Iran for almost a year. In 2010 she started working as a “Research Scientist” with the Air liquid Company at ENSTA ParisTech. She then began her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta in 2011. She is passionate about science advocacy, business intelligence and communication. She has served as a Business and Compliance Analyst with the peace officer sections at the City of Edmonton (COE) for 4 years and then joined the City of Vancouver as a Data Analyst in 2021. Dr. Gholidoust is currently an Assistant professor at University Canada West. 

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Co-investigator for MOSAIC IV and V

Dr. Mohsen Ghodrat

Mohsen earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta in 2018, following his MSc and BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Shiraz University in Iran. With over 10 years of industrial experience, Mohsen has worked across various sectors, including transportation, gaming, natural resource management, and banking. He has applied his expertise in mathematical modeling, control systems, machine learning, and deep learning to address complex challenges in robotics, automation, customer relationship management, and data-driven decision making.

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Principal Investigator for MOSAIC I Repilcation

Cheryl Thomas

Cheryl has consulted to over 250 organizations in the public and private sectors across Canada, the Americas and the Middle East. She is an expert in organizational transformation from both a process implementation and an organizational culture point of view.   She aligns leaders, teams and other stakeholders with the strategies to achieve the organization’s vision and goals.  Her clients have included startups through to large multinational companies and governments.  Her interest in Urban Resilience comes from facilitating numerous meetings with municipalities as they struggled to make critical financial decisions. Cheryl has taught in Business programs at many universities in Canada and the Middle East as an adjunct to her consulting practice; and, has supervised hundreds of MBA Capstone Projects. 

Co-Investigator

Mozghan PourmoradNasseri

Mozhgan holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Tartu, Estonia. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in France and then served as an Assistant Professor in Mobility Modeling in Tartu. During this time, she contributed to multiple collaborative projects with cities, industry partners, and academic institutions across Europe, focusing on data-driven urban mobility. Her research interests include active mobility, network science, and urban informatics, with an emphasis on developing data-informed solutions for complex urban challenges to help shape smarter, more sustainable cities. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the University Canada West (UCW).