PhD Candidate · Queensland University of Technology · ARC Training Centre for Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions (AVR3)
Also published as Ashkan Y. Zadeh
I am a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), affiliated with the ARC Training Centre for Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions (AVR3). My research sits at the intersection of human-centred AI, explainability, natural language processing, and automated driving.
My thesis develops a framework for generating human-centred explanations for automated vehicles — turning complex autonomous decisions into natural language that people can understand, evaluate, and trust.
Focus › Human-Centred Explainable AI (XAI)
Domain › Automated Vehicles · NLP · LLMs · Computer Vision
Goal › Trustworthy, understandable autonomous driving decisions
| Area | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| 🧠 | Explainable AI | Turning AV decisions into structured, justifiable explanations |
| 💬 | NLP & LLMs | Linguistic building blocks and language generation for AV decisions |
| 🚗 | Automated Vehicles | Perception, scene context, and sensor evidence pipelines |
| 👥 | Human-Centred AI | Trust calibration, human evaluation, and explanation design |
| 🔬 | Psycholinguistics | Grounding XAI design in how people process and interpret language |
2,050 annotated driving events · 35 experienced drivers · Brisbane CBD, Australia
Cameras · LiDAR · GNSS · IMU · Natural language explanations · Situational Awareness annotations
X-Blocks: Linguistic Building Blocks of Natural Language Explanations for Automated Vehicles
Yousefi Zadeh et al. · 2026 · Submitted
Explainability in Automated Driving: From Spatial Attention to Human-Centred Reasoning
Rakotonirainy, Yousefi Zadeh et al. · AHFE IHIET 2026
PsyLingXAV: A Psycholinguistics Design Framework for XAI in Automated Vehicles
Yousefi Zadeh et al. · XAI 2025 · World Conference on Explainable AI, Istanbul
Integrated Intelligent Control Systems for Eco and Safe Driving in Autonomous Vehicles
Yousefi Zadeh et al. · IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems · 2024
Fuzzy Adaptive Cruise Control with Model Predictive Control for Automated Driving
Mehraban, Yousefi Zadeh et al. · Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence · 2024
| Queensland University of Technology | AVR3 |
| Faculty of Health, School of Psychology and Counselling | ARC Training Centre for Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions |
| Brisbane, Australia | Australia |
PhD Candidate · Doctoral Researcher · IEEE Member · Peer Reviewer
IEEE T-ITS · IEEE Access · Automotive CE Applications TC · AdHoc Committee on Autonomous Vehicles (VTS)