RAI Lab University of New Brunswick
— People

The people of RAI.

Researchers, students, and collaborators working on responsible AI at UNB.

Principal Investigator

Dr. Mahtab Sarvmaili
Director · Assistant Professor

Dr. Mahtab Sarvmaili

Dr. Sarvmaili is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick. Her research advances responsible AI through explainability, interpretability, and the safe deployment of large language models, with applications spanning healthcare, law, and the public interest. She joined UNB in November 2025.

Current Students

4 active · recruiting

Graduate Students

Umair Akram
Umair Akram (he/him)
Researcher · ML Engineer

Researcher and Machine Learning Engineer with 6+ years' experience in NLP, LLMs, and Explainable AI. Currently pursuing an MSc in AI and Machine Learning at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. His work focuses on AI systems that are interpretable, trustworthy, and socially responsible — with applications in healthcare, law, and social good.

Sarun Weerakul
Sarun Weerakul (he/him)
Graduate Student · Co-supervised

MSc student at UNB's Institute of Biomedical Engineering, co-supervised by Dr. Erik Scheme and Dr. Mahtab Sarvmaili. His research focuses on real-time gait and mobility assessment using pressure tile sensors, camera-based feature extraction, and LLMs to generate interpretable clinician-facing summaries. Sarun holds a BSc in Software Engineering from UNB and a BSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Prince of Songkla University, Thailand, and previously worked as a licensed community pharmacist before moving into software engineering and research.

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Open position
MSc · PhD applicants

We're actively recruiting graduate students with interests in responsible AI, interpretable ML, and LLM-powered systems. Learn more →

Undergraduate Students

Tushita Govindaraj
Tushita Govindaraj (she/her)
Honours Thesis Student

Fourth-year Computer Science student at the University of New Brunswick, graduating in Spring 2027, with a diploma in Applied AI and Analytics from Singapore. Outside academics, she is the Keynote Speaker Chair for the annual Girls STEM Up Conference and served as President of the Computer Science Association from 2025-2026.

When she is not doing any of these, she loves reading.

Amil Shahul
Amil Shahul (he/him)
Undergraduate Researcher

Amil is a third-year Computer Science undergraduate researcher at UNB. He is currently an intern at ELITS Canada, building integration and evaluation infrastructure for enterprise generative AI systems. Previously, he built Quorum, a meeting intelligence platform for rural Canadian municipalities. His research interests are representation learning and evaluation frameworks for machine learning systems.

Alumni

Past students
Erin MacNeil
Erin MacNeil (they/them)
Undergraduate Co-op Student · RAG

Born and raised in Fredericton. Started their degree in 2021 and finishing their final study term in Fall 2026, set to graduate in Spring 2027 with a minor in Philosophy. Currently working on Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Co-supervised with Dr. Scott Bateman.

Outside of programming: gaming, creative writing, hiking.

Matthew Young
Matthew Young (he/him)
Co-advised with Dr. Ga Wu

Past graduate student.

Sujay Sujitbhai Menon
Sujay Sujitbhai Menon (he/him)
Co-advised with Dr. Ga Wu

Past graduate student.