Fatemeh Asgarinejad

Hi! 👋 I'm Fatemeh ("Faa-teh-meh") Asgarinejad. Beginning Fall 2025, I will join University of California Riverside's Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department as an Assistant Professor of Teaching! :). My research interests lie at the intersection of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Education, as well as Machine Learning Applications.

Previously, I received my Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego, advised by Professors Tajana Rosing and Baris Aksanli (joint with San Diego State University). During my Ph.D., I worked on Secure, Efficient and Private Computing at the Edge with Hyperdimensional Computing, and explored its synergy with Machine Learning. I am honored to have received the 2025 Barbara J. and Paul D. Saltman Excellent Teaching Award from UC San Diego, as well as the 2025 Excellence in Teaching Award from the UCSD Computer Science and Engineering Department.

Collaborations: If you are interested in collaborting with me, please contact me at fasgarinejad @ ucsd.edu (soon to be updated).

News:

May 2025: I won the UCSD CSE Department Award for Excellence in Teaching
May 2025: Defended my PhD!
May 2025: Poster accepted in Mathematic Association of America MathFest!
April 2025: I won the UCSD 2025 Barbara J. and Paul D. Saltman Excellent Teaching Award!

Teaching

University of California, Riverside

Instructor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
- EE 5: Circuits and Electronics (Fall 2025)
- EE 16: Data Analysis for Engineering Applications (Fall 2025)

University of California, San Diego

Instructor, Computer Science and Engineering
- CSE 20: Discrete Mathematics (Summer 2024) Course Syllabus
Teaching Assistant, Computer Science and Engineering
- CSE 101: Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Summer 2023)
- CSE 20: Discrete Mathematics (Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022, Spring 2023, Winter 2023, Winter 2025, Spring 2025)
- CSE 21: Mathematics for Algorithms and Systems Analysis (Winter, Spring, and Fall 2024)
Teaching Assistant, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute
- DSC 200: Data Science Programming (Fall 2023)
- DSC 40A: Theoretical Foundations of Data Science (Summer 2023)

San Diego State University

Instructor: First Year Seminars, four Classes (Fall 2021)

UC San Diego Extension

Teaching Assistant: DSE 220x - Machine Learning Fundamentals (Prof. Sanjoy Dasgupta, Three Semesters Sep 2019 - Aug 2020)

UC San Diego Teaching Certificates

UC San Diego Student-Centered College Teaching & Course Design Certificate
Leadership in Teaching: Graduate Peer Review of Instruction Program Certificate
Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) Community of Practice Certificate

Publications

F. Asgarinejad, F. Ponzina, O. Gungor, T. Rosing, B. Aksanli, “HDXpose: Harnessing Hyperdimensional Computing’s Explainability for Adversarial Attacks”, ICCAD, 2024. [slides]
F. Asgarinejad, F. Asgarinejad, J. Morris, T. Rosing, B. Aksanli, VisionHD: Revisiting Hyperdimensional Computing for Improved Image Classification, ISLPED, 2024.
M. Gaddi, F. Ponzina, F. Asgarinejad, B. Aksanli, T. Rosing, “HyperECG: ECG Signal Inference from Radar with Hyperdimensional Computing”, BIBE, 2024.
F. Asgarinejad, J. Morris, T. Rosing, B. Aksanli, PIONEER: Towards Highly Efficient and Accurate Hyperdimensional Computing using Learned Projection, ASP-DAC, 2024. [slides]
F. Asgarinejad, A. Thomas, R. Hildebrant, Z Zhang, S. Ren. Rosing, B. Aksanli Optimized Early Prediction of Business Processes with Hyperdimensional Computing, MDPI Information, 2024.
F. Asgarinejad, X. Yu, D. Jiang, J. Morris, T. Rosing, B. Aksanli, Enhanced Noise-Resilient Pressure Mat System Based on Hyperdimensional Computing, MDPI Sensors, 2024.
R. Chandrasecaran, F. Asgarinejad, J. Morris, T. Rosing, Multi-label classification with Hyperdimensional Representations IEEE ACCESS, 2023.
X. Yu, M. Zhou, F. Asgarinejad, O. Gungor, B. Aksanli, T. Rosing, Lightning Talk: Private and Secure Edge AI with Hyperdimensional Computing, DAC, 2023.
Z. Zhang, R. Hildebrant, F. Asgarinejad, N. Venkatasubramanian, S. Ren, Improving Process Discovery Results by Filtering Out Outliers from Event Logs with Hidden Markov Models, CBI, 2021.
R. Garcia, F. Asgarinejad, B. Khaleghi, T. Rosing, M. Imani TruLook: A Framework for Configurable GPU Approximation, DATE, 2021.
F. Asgarinejad, A. Thomas, T. Rosing, Detection of Epileptic Seizures from Surface EEG using Hyperdimensional Computing, EMBC, 2020. slides, presentation
B. Khaleghi, S. Salamat, A. Thomas, F. Asgarinejad, Y. Kim, T. Rosing, SHEARer Highly-Efficient Hyperdimensional Computing by Software-Hardware Enabled Multifold Approximation, ISLPED, 2020.

Mentorship

Jiaying Yang, B.Sc. student in Computer Science, Project: Addressing Catastrophic Forgetting in Neural Networks using Hyperdimensional Computing. Summer 2024-present
Matilda Gaddi, B.Sc. student in Data Science, Project: ECG Signal Inference from Radar with Hyperdimensional Computing. Summer 2023-present
A.J. Olivares, B.Sc. student in Computer Science, Project: Addressing Catastrophic Forgetting in Neural Networks using Hyperdimensional Computing. Summer 2024
Amir Kiadi, B.Sc. student in Computer Science, Project: LLM on Edge. Fall 2025-present
Ava Emami, B.Sc. student in Computer Science, Project: Defense mechanisms using HDC. Spring 2025-present
Lilianne Montehermoso, High School student, PRISM Center Research Program, Project: Analyzing Adversarial Attacks in Machine Learning. Summer 2024-Spring 2025

Awards and Honors

UCSD CSE Department Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2025
UCSD 2025 Barbara J. and Paul D. Saltman Excellent Teaching Award
DAC’61 Young Fellow Best Video Presentation Award, 2024
DAC Young Fellow at the 61st and 62nd Design Automation Conference in San Francisco, 2024, 2025
SRC Research Scholar and awarded funding for conference participation, 2024, 2025
UCSD travel grant, 2024
Member of HKN (Eta Kappa Nu) Honor Society of UC San Diego since May 2022
Ranked 20th (top 0.1%) in Iran’s national university entrance exam for M.Sc. in Computer Science
Ranked top 0.4% in Iran’s national university entrance exam for M.Sc. in Computer Engineering

Professional Service

Reviewer for ACM Computing Surveys
Reviewer for Springer Biomedical Materials & Devices
Student Activities Chair for IEEE San Diego Section

Talks

Invited Talks

TECHCON, Research Scholar and Presenter, Sep 2025
UCSD Teaching and Learning Commons, Summer Teaching Community 2025, Panelist, June 2025
University of California Riverside, ECE, Logic Opmitization and Multi-Level Minimization, Winter 2025
Purdue University, CS, Induction and Recursion, Winter 2025
California State University Long Beach, CECS, Towards Efficient Learning at the Edge by Hyperdimensional Computing, Winter 2025
University of Texas Austin, CS, Clustering: K-Means, Winter 2025
University of Texas A&M, CSE, Sorting Algorithms: Merge Sort, Winter 2025
Chapman University, CS, Simple and Multiple Linear Regression, Winter 2025
NorthWestern University, Statistics and Data Science, Introduction to Hypothesis Testing and its Application in Real-Life and Data Science, Winter 2025
PRISM Center Annual Review, UC San Diego, Panelist, “PRISM Center Summer Virtual High School Program”, Nov 2024
TECHCON, “Harnessing Hyperdimensional Computing’s Explainability for Adversarial Attacks”, Sep 2024
Colegio San Agustin-Bacolod University’s 60th Founding Anniversary Research Conference, “Applying Machine Learning and Brain-Inspired Computing for Innovative Problem Solving”, July 2023

Conference Talks

ICCAD, 2024 [slides]
ASP-DAC, 2024 [slides]
EMBC, 2020 [slides] | [presentation]

Diversity, Inclusion & Mentorship

Women In Computing Mentorship Program (at UC San Diego), Sep 2024-present
Research Mentor (at UC San Diego, SEElab), August 2023-present
Research Mentor (at UC San Diego, PRISM Center), Virtual High School Research Program for high school students, Summer 2024
HKN (Eta Kappa Nu) Honor Society of UC San Diego Outreach Program for middle-school and High-school students, May 2022-present
Python Summer School Mentor (at Sharif University of Technology, under supervision of Prof. Ali Sharifi-Zarchi), Summer 2023