URSA Research
Meet the Team
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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.
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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.