About

I'm a PhD student university teacher at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University where I am teaching and researching natural language processing and privacy preservation. I have previously worked in the software industry—mostly as a back-end developer and as a data engineer.

Really? Is that all you are?

No, I'm also passionate about politics and have a background as an elected official for the Social Democrats. While most of my spare-time used to be consumed by this constructive urge to work for a better society, now all that energy has been directed towards ranting. :)

A lot of time is also spent geeking out about languages. My passion for natural languages goes beyond processing them using computers, I also like them irl! I'm always working on improving my Persian language skills (my second mother tongue after Swedish) or oversharing "fun facts" about phonetics and other exciting language features.

Why are you writing a blog?

I have no delusions about becoming internet famous. This blog is inspired by something I read many years ago, that posting your ideas and thoughts online is a good way to document your thinking. Writing as if there is a reader forces you to write clearly. Besides, when you are reading something you've written several years ago, what you're reading is essentially written by a stranger. As it turns out, some of my posts also get read by a decent number of actual strangers!

An incomplete and compressed timeline