University of Strathclyde

NeuraSearch Laboratory

Our research spans
neuroadaptive retrieval 
We welcome motivated candidates for PhD, postdoctoral, and fellowship opportunities (Newton International, Marie Curie, and more), as well as short-term placements such as ERASMUS and Commonwealth projects. Reach out to explore how your expertise can contribute to our collaborative, forward-thinking team.

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Follow the lab for updates on events, experiments, datasets and open collaboration calls.

Research at the University of Strathclyde

Research Focus Areas

We blend neuroscience, information retrieval, and responsible AI to build human-centred search experiences. Click a card to explore the projects anchoring each workstream and meet the researchers leading them.

  • Cognitive & Behavioural Information Science
    Focus Area

    Cognitive & Behavioural Information Science

    Integrates psychological and neuroscientific approaches to understand how people seek information across traditional and contemporary IR systems, with a focus on equitable access for underserved communities.

    Asmaa Alqadri
    Claire Rogers
    Phakinai Sujarirat
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  • Neuroadaptive Systems & Intelligent Interaction
    Focus Area

    Neuroadaptive Systems & Intelligent Interaction

    Builds machine learning systems that translate neurophysiological signals into adaptive human-computer interaction and information retrieval experiences.

    Niall McGuire
    Iakovos Tenedios
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  • Responsible AI, Safety, & Ethics
    Focus Area

    Responsible AI, Safety, & Ethics

    Audits modern AI pipelines—from LLMs to neurophysiological analytics—to surface and mitigate bias, risk, and privacy harms.

    Jakub Wojdan
    Priya Parmar
    Stanley Anuonye
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Recent Work

Recent Publications

Explore the latest outputs from our lab, spanning bias auditing, retrieval, and responsible AI. We share artefacts so collaborators can dive deeper into each study.

2025

25 publications
Graph Variate Neural Networks
O Roy · Y Moshfeghi · K Smith

Modelling dynamically evolving spatio-temporal signals is a prominent challenge in the Graph Neural Network (GNN) literature. Notably, GNNs assume an existing underlying graph structure. While this underlying structure may not...

Exploring the variations in browsing and dwell time behaviours in web pages among users with different levels of attention

M Torabi · M Mirzabeigi · J Abbaspour · H Hadianfard · Y Moshfeghi

Although cognitive metrics like attention significantly influence user interaction with digital environments, their role in web search behaviour remains underexplored. This study employs a multidimensional attention framework to investigate the...

Impact of Dataset Diversity on Machine Learning Prediction of Reorganisation Energies in Organic Semiconductors

M Zollner · T Nematiaram · Y Moshfeghi

This work investigates how input characteristics, particularly dataset diversity, affect the performance of machine learning algorithms in predicting hole and electron reorganisation energies, ultimately aiding the identification of promising organic...

Engineering Safe and Trustworthy AI: The Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches and Methodologies (PHAWM) Project

S Stumpf · P Di Campli San Vito · C Hyde-Vaamonde · G Thuermer · ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in many applications, yet systematic engineering approaches to make them safe and trustworthy are lagging behind. Recent regulations, such as the EU AI...

Covariance density neural networks
O Roy · Y Moshfeghi · K Smith

Graph neural networks have re-defined how we model and predict on network data but there lacks a consensus on choosing the correct underlying graph structure on which to model signals....

EEG subject detection: opportunity or threat?

N McGuire · Y Moshfeghi

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) leverage neurophysiological features like Electroencephalography (EEG) to enhance user-computer interaction. EEG s high temporal resolution and unobtrusiveness make it ideal for BCI systems, facilitating real-time interaction with...

NeuroPhysIIR: International Workshop on NeuroPhysiological Approaches for Interactive Information Retrieval
J Gwizdka · J Mostafa · M Zhang · K Ji · Y Moshfeghi · T Ruotsalo · D Spina

The International Workshop on NeuroPhysiological Approaches for Interactive Information Retrieval (NeuroPhysIIR’25) aims to bringing together researchers from information science, human-computer interaction, cognitive neuroscience, and related fields, to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration...

Neurophysiological Approaches for Understanding Information Seeking

J Gwizdka · J Mostafa · Y Moshfeghi

Humans undertake information locating and consuming behavior continuously and rely on it as a mechanism for survival, socialization, and self-development. Infor-mation locating and consuming, collectively referred to as information seeking,...

Neuroanatomical correlates and predictors of psychotic symptoms in Alzheimer s disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis (vol 204, 109006, 2024)

S Scarfo · A Marsella · L Grigoriadou · Y Moshfeghi · WJ Mcgeown

On creating a brain-to-text decoder
Z Lamprou · Y Moshfeghi

Brain decoding has emerged as a rapidly advancing and extensively utilized technique within neuroscience. This paper centers on the application of raw electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for decoding human brain activity,...

Accelerating the discovery of high-mobility molecular semiconductors: a machine learning approach

T Nematiaram · Z Lamprou · Y Moshfeghi

The two-dimensionality (2D) of charge transport significantly affects charge carrier mobility in organic semiconductors, making it a key target for materials discovery and design. Traditional quantum-chemical methods for calculating 2D...

Jose. 2013. Building a large-scale corpus for evaluating event detection on twitter

AJ McMinn · Y Moshfeghi

Designing Chatbots for Informal Learning in Museums

C Kist · Y Moshfeghi

While several museums are already implementing AI technologies, little work has been done to advance knowledge of whether and how chatbots can support visitors’ informal learning experiences with heritage. This...

2024

18 publications

Clinical Manifestations

S Scarfo · Y Moshfeghi · WJ McGeown

BackgroundPsychotic symptoms (delusions and or hallucinations) are among the most common and impactful neuropsychiatric symptoms that occur within Alzheimer s disease (AD): present in around half of AD patients, they...

Corrigendum to Neuroanatomical correlates and predictors of psychotic symptoms in Alzheimer s disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis

S Scarfo · AMA Marsella · L Grigoriadou · Y Moshfeghi · WJ McGeown

The authors regret that Table 1 was not formatted displayed correctly. In this version Table 1 has been corrected.

More technology? Evaluating the effectiveness of smart thermostats

P Prochacki · D Thomas · A Moreno-Rangel · Y Moshfeghi

Climate change has been recognized as a significant threat for over a century, with early predictions by Svante Arrhenius in 1896 and subsequent confirmations by Guy Callendar in 1938, who...

Gold: Geometry problem solver with natural language description
J Zhang · Y Moshfeghi

Addressing the challenge of automated geometry math problem-solving in artificial intelligence (AI) involves understanding multi-modal information and mathematics. Current methods struggle with accurately interpreting geometry diagrams, which hinders effective problem-solving....

Assessing the stability of clusters of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment

S Scarfo · Y Moshfeghi · WJ McGeown

AimThe aim of the study was to investigate the factors that underpin neuropsychiatric symptoms and how they might evolve over time in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s...

GAPS: geometry-aware problem solver
J Zhang · Y Jiang · Y Moshfeghi

Geometry problem solving presents a formidable challenge within the NLP community. Existing approaches often rely on models designed for solving math word problems, neglecting the unique characteristics of geometry math...

GeoEval: Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs and Multi-Modal Models on Geometry Problem-Solving

YM Jiaxin Zhang · Zhongzhi Li · Mingliang Zhang · Fei Yin · Chenglin Liu

2023

17 publications
Confidence as Part of Searcher’s Cognitive Context
D Michalkova · MP Rodriguez · Y Moshfeghi

A growing body of interdisciplinary NeuraSearch research in the Information Retrieval (IR) domain, built on the investigations evaluating searchers’ neurophysiological activity captured during the information search interactions, advances the understanding...

Information overload: a concept analysis
MA Belabbes · I Ruthven · Y Moshfeghi · D Rasmussen Pennington

Purpose With the shift to an information-based society and to the de-centralisation of information, information overload has attracted a growing interest in the computer and information science research communities. However,...

2022

9 publications
Information need awareness: an EEG study
D Michalkova · M Parra-Rodriguez · Y Moshfeghi

A fundamental goal of Information Retrieval (IR) is to satisfy searchers information need (IN). Advances in neuroimaging technologies have allowed for interdisciplinary research to investigate the brain activity associated with...

EgoPlan: A framework for multi-agent planning using single agent planners

M McArthur · Y Moshfeghi · M Cashmore

Planning problems are, in general, PSPACE-complete; large problems, especially multi-agent problems with required co-ordination, can be intractable or impractical to solve. Factored planning and multi-agent planning both address this by...

2021

12 publications

2020

5 publications
The cortical activity of graded relevance
Z Pinkosova · WJ McGeown · Y Moshfeghi

Relevance is an essential concept in Information Retrieval (IR). Recent studies using brain imaging have significantly contributed towards the understanding of this concept, but only as a binary notion, i.e....

2019

9 publications

Introduction to the special issue on neuro-information science.

J Gwizdka · Y Moshfeghi · ML Wilson

The field of neuroscience has fruitfully contributed to a wide variety of other fields, for example, economics, marketing, and information systems, where the broad adoption and influence of neurophysiological (NP)...

Looking for opportunities: challenges in procurement search
S Mackie · D MacDonald · L Azzopardi · Y Moshfeghi

Procurement legislation stipulates that information about the goods, services, or works, that tax-funded authorities wish to purchase are made publicly available in a procurement contract notice. However, for businesses wishing...

Cortical activity of relevance
Z Pinkosova · Y Moshfeghi

Many theoretical approaches in information retrieval assume that relevance is based on mutual interaction of the system and user. Past studies have mainly focused on the system side of relevance,...

2018

3 publications

2017

7 publications

A Study of Snippet Length and Informativeness

D Maxwell · L Azzopardi · Y Moshfeghi

Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) is a complex, non-trivial process where a searcher undertakes a variety of di erent actions during a search session [16]. Core to their experience and success...

2016

4 publications

2015

4 publications

UCUI 15: Proceedings of the ACM First International Workshop on Understanding the City with Urban Informatics

Y Moshfeghi · I Ounis · C Macdonald · J Jose · P Triantafillou · M Livingston · ...

UCUI 15 : Proceedings of the ACM First International Workshop on Understanding the City with Urban Informatics - Enlighten Publications Skip to main content Accessibility information Site navigation Study Research...

UCUI 15 chairs welcome

Y Moshfeghi · I Ounis · C Macdonald · JM Jose · P Triantafillou · M Livingston · ...

UCUI 15 chairs welcome — University of Strathclyde Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content University of Strathclyde Home University of Strathclyde Logo Help & FAQ...

2014

3 publications
Neural Features of Video Topical Relevance
LR Pinto · Y Moshfeghi · FE Pollick · JM Jose

Neural Features of Video Topical Relevance Page 1 Gmunden Retreat on NeuroIS 2014 │ © NeuroIS.org 51 For over 50 years, Information Retrieval Systems (IRSs) have been helping users to...

2013

9 publications
On contextual photo tag recommendation
PJ McParlane · Y Moshfeghi · JM Jose

Image tagging is a growing application on social media websites, however, the performance of many auto-tagging methods are often poor. Recent work has exploited an image s context (e.g. time...

Understanding relevance: An fMRI study
Y Moshfeghi · LR Pinto · FE Pollick · JM Jose

Relevance is one of the key concepts in Information Retrieval (IR). A huge body of research exists that attempts to understand this concept so as to operationalize it for IR...

2012

2 publications

2011

4 publications

2010

1 publication
Filtering documents with subspaces
B Piwowarski · I Frommholz · Y Moshfeghi · M Lalmas · K Van Rijsbergen

We propose an approach to build a subspace representation for documents. This more powerful representation is a first step towards the development of a quantum-based model for Information Retrieval (IR)....

2009

7 publications
An architecture for life-long user modelling
D Elliott · F Hopfgartner · T Leelanupab · Y Moshfeghi · JM Jose

In this paper, we propose a united architecture for the creation of life-long user profiles. Our architecture combines different steps required for a user prole, including feature extraction and representation,...

2007

1 publication

Intelligent RSS Aggregator

Y Moshfeghi

Intelligent rss aggregator - University of Strathclyde Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content University of Strathclyde Home University of Strathclyde Logo Help & FAQ Home...

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Upcoming & Recent Events

Lab Events

Workshops, panels, and demo days where we exchange ideas with our partners and the broader information retrieval community.

Meet Our Team

Our Team

Meet the NeuraSearch Lab team — a diverse group of researchers uniting expertise across AI, neuroscience, and discovery sciences to push the boundaries of human-centred innovation.

  • Yashar Moshfeghi

    Yashar Moshfeghi

    Reader (Associate Professor) · Director

    Founds NeuraSearch Laboratory and bridges neuroscience, data science, and AI for accountable information retrieval.

  • Niall McGuire

    Niall McGuire

    PhD Candidate · Year 3

    Machine learning models for processing and decoding EEG data, with applications in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval.

  • Claire Rogers

    Claire Rogers

    PhD Student · Year 3

    Explores how people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment interact with generative AI tools, examining trust, usability, and the potential for supportive, inclusive applications.

  • Asmaa Alqadri

    Asmaa Alqadri

    PhD Student · Year 2

    Designs machine-learning assistive tools for people with cognitive disabilities and neurodegenerative disorders.

  • Malin Zollner

    Malin Zollner

    PhD Student · Year 2

    Discovering next-generation organic semiconductors using high-throughput screening and machine learning for property prediction.

  • Iakovos Tenedios

    Iakovos Tenedios

    PhD Student · Year 2

    Advances EEG-based inner speech decoding to bridge neural activity and language, enabling future brain–computer communication systems.

  • Phakinai Sujarirat

    Phakinai Sujarirat

    PhD Student · Year 2

    Explores how everyday interactions with Large Language Models affect cognition and memory.

  • Stanley Anuonye

    Stanley Anuonye

    PhD Student · Year 2

    Developing privacy-preserving machine learning methods for EEG/BCI data without compromising model performance.

  • Priya Parmar

    Priya Parmar

    PhD Student · Year 2

    Psychometric evaluation of Large Language Models through personality and empathy frameworks.

  • Jakub Wojdan

    Jakub Wojdan

    PhD Student · Year 1

    Bias auditing and mitigation of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models for GLAM applications.

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