Dr. Yashar Deldjoo
Senior Researcher & Assistant Professor, Polytechnic University of Bari

Dr. Yashar Deldjoo is a senior research scientist and a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy. His work focuses on integrating elements of trustworthy and responsible AI (e.g., fairness, adversarial robustness, security) into recommender systems. His current research is highly concentrated on harnessing the potential of Generative AI (e.g., large language models and LLM agents) for recommender systems. He has contributed novel research on understanding and mitigating risks inherent in generative outputs—such as hallucinations, randomness, and bias amplification. Notably, his work on evaluation frameworks for recommender systems first identifies these emerging risks and then proposes holistic evaluation strategies to ensure recommendations are not only accurate but also factually grounded and ethically aligned.

He recently led a multidisciplinary collaboration involving Amazon, DeepMind, and several leading universities for an upcoming book at FN&TIR'25, Next-Generation Recommender Systems under Generative AI (Gen-RecSys), which explores advanced generative techniques. A widely recognized survey version of this book was presented at KDD'24. He also discussed next-generation Gen-RecSys on the Recsperts Podcast. Another line of his research concerns multimodal learning for RecSys, Fashion AI, and the music industry. He serves as Associate Editor for IEEE TKDE and ACM CSUR, Distinguished Reviewer for ACM TORS, and Guest Editor for special issues on Generative RecSys (2025) and Trustworthy RecSys (2024). He is a Senior Program Committee (SPC) member at SIGIR, CIKM, ECAI, TheWebConf, and ACM RecSys. He was recognized among the top 2% of researchers worldwide (Stanford’s Ioannidis database, 2023–2024).

Highlights
  • Forthcoming Book: “Recommendation with Generative Models” (2025)
  • Workshop: Co-organizing ROEGEN @ ACM RecSys 2024 (Risks & Opportunities of Generative Models)
  • Podcast: Generative RecSys on Recsperts
Dr. Yashar Deldjoo

Research

I investigate reliable and trustworthy AI in Recommender Systems, emphasizing:

  • Adversarial robustness & attack defense
  • Fairness & bias mitigation
  • Explainability & interpretability
  • Generative AI & large language models

My aim is to bridge theoretical models and real-world deployment, ensuring AI is socially responsible.

News

  • Joining IEEE TKDE: Appointed as Associate Editor at IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE).
  • Special Issue on Generative RecSys: We are co-editing a special issue at ACM TORS (2025) —call for papers now open.

Note to Students

I'm interested in collaborating with students/post-docs in:

  • Generative Recommender Systems
  • Ethics & Trust in AI/ML
  • Evaluation Metrics for Risk/Hazards

Feel free to reach out if you are passionate about pushing AI innovation responsibly.

Keynotes & Invited Talks

  • 2025 – WSDM’25 (Munich, Germany): “Recommendation with Generative Models” (Tutorial)
  • August 2024 – KDD’24 (Barcelona, Spain): “Generative AI for RecSys” (Panelist)
  • 2024 – ECAI’24 (Santiago de Compostela, Spain): “Understanding Language Modeling Paradigm Adaptations in Recommender Systems” (Tutorial)
  • November 2021 – Vector Institute for AI (Toronto, Canada): “Fairness and Biases of ML in RecSys”
  • October 2021 – BMW Artificial Intelligence (Munich, Germany): “Fairness & Bias in ML-based Systems”
  • 2021 – RecSys’21 (Amsterdam, Netherlands): “Pursuing Privacy in Recommender Systems” (Tutorial)
  • 2021 – ECIR’21 (Virtual): “Adversarial Learning for Recommendation” (Tutorial)
  • 2020 – RecSys’20 (Brazil-Virtual): “Adversarial Learning for Recommendation: From Concept to Code”
  • 2018 – RecSys’18 (Vancouver, Canada): “Multimedia Recommender Systems” (Tutorial)

Editorial & Service Roles

  • Associate Editor: IEEE TKDE, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
  • Distinguished Reviewer: ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (TORS)
  • Guest Editor: TORS Special Issues on Trustworthy RecSys (2024) & Generative RecSys (2025)
  • Senior Program Committee: SIGIR, CIKM, ECAI, TheWebConf, ACM RecSys

Publications

Below is an extended selection of influential works (journals, conference proceedings, surveys, and book chapters). For a comprehensive list, please see Google Scholar or DBLP .

Surveys & Book Chapters

Selected Technical Publications

Below is an extended selection of influential works (journals, conference proceedings, surveys, and book chapters). For a comprehensive list, please see Google Scholar or DBLP.

Professional Activities

  • Aug 2022 – Present: Tenure-track Assistant Professor, Polytechnic University of Bari
  • Aug 2019 – Jul 2022: Assistant Professor (RtD-A), Polytechnic University of Bari
  • Apr 2019 – Jul 2019: Postdoctoral Researcher, Polytechnic University of Bari
  • Jan 2018 – Feb 2019: Research Assistant, University of Milano-Bicocca

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science (Focus: Recommender Systems), Politecnico di Milano (2014–2018)
  • M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology (2008–2010)
  • B.A. in English-Linguistics, University of Gothenburg (2007–2011)
  • B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, University of Guilan (2002–2006)

Awards & Honors

  • 2021 – AdvML@KDD’21 Best Paper Award
  • 2021 – CIKM’21 Short-Paper Runner-up Award
  • 2019 – CBMI’19 Best Paper Award
  • Stanford University “Top 2% Scientists” recognition (2023–2024)
  • Doctorate with High Honors (Politecnico di Milano, 2018)

© Dr. Yashar Deldjoo | deldjooy@acm.org | Scholar | Twitter | GitHub