Computer Engineering · Sharif University of Technology

Kiarash Kiani Feriz

I'm a final-year Computer Engineering undergraduate at Sharif University of Technology. My research asks how machine learning systems fail under adversarial pressure, and how to make them reliable. So far that has meant backdoor attacks and adversarial transferability in speech recognition and robustness of speech foundation models.

Portrait of Kiarash Kiani Feriz outdoors with mountains behind him

Research interests

  • ML Privacy & Security
  • Causality & Interpretability
  • Memorization & Generalization
  • Large Language Models
  • Computer Vision

Publications

  1. Accepted · NeurIPS 2026

    Breaking Adversarial Transferability in Fine-Tuned Speech Recognition

    Proposes TransferBreaker, a unified fine-tuning framework that mitigates adversarial transferability in black-box ASR deployments.

  2. Accepted · TMLR

    GhostWord: A Fine-Grained Backdoor Attack on Automatic Speech Recognition

    A word-level, temporally localized data-poisoning backdoor that uses acoustic triggers for precise semantic and sentence-level manipulation of ASR output.

  3. Under review · ICASSP 2027

    Transferable Adversarial Robustness for Speech Foundation Models via Hierarchical Stabilization

    Improves adversarial robustness of speech foundation models through hierarchical stabilization, with Mohammad Sabokrou as corresponding author and Mohammad Hossein Rohban as co-advisor.

  4. Under review · ICLR 2027

    Robustness After Specialization: Installing Adversarial Robustness in Speech Foundation Model Descendants

    Studies how robustness can be transferred to specialized descendants of speech foundation models and preserved during downstream specialization. Mohammad Hossein Rohban is the corresponding author, with Mohammad Sabokrou as co-advisor.

  5. Co-authored

    CELAD: Compositional Evaluation for Logical Anomaly Detection

    Logical anomaly detection for industrial images, with results competitive with state-of-the-art methods.

  6. Co-authored

    Generative AI for Character Animation: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques, Applications, and Future Directions

    A survey spanning face generation, expression rendering, gesture and motion synthesis, avatar creation, and texture modeling.

Research experience

Feb 2025 – Present

Research Assistant

Advisor: Mohammad Hossein Rohban

  • Developed GhostWord, a backdoor attack on speech recognition systems, accepted at TMLR.
  • Proposed TransferBreaker to mitigate adversarial transferability in fine-tuned ASR models, accepted at NeurIPS 2026.
  • Co-authored CELAD on logical anomaly detection for industrial images.
Jun 2026 – Present

Research Assistant

Advisor: Mohammad Sabokrou

  • Corresponding advisor on our work on transferable adversarial robustness for speech foundation models via hierarchical stabilization (under review at ICASSP 2027).
  • Co-advising our study of how robustness can be installed in, and preserved by, specialized descendants of speech foundation models (under review at ICLR 2027).
Jul 2024 – Present

Research Assistant

Advisor: Ehsaneddin Asgari

  • Co-authored a comprehensive survey on generative AI for character animation, covering face generation, expression rendering, gesture and motion synthesis, avatar creation, and texture modeling.
  • Covered recent advances in diffusion and foundation models, including key trends, real-world uses, and how these systems are evaluated.

Education & honors

Sep 2022 – Apr 2027

Sharif University of Technology

B.S. in Computer Engineering

2022

National University Entrance Exam

Ranked 23rd among more than 150,000 participants, placing in the top 0.02%.

Teaching assistance

Volunteer teaching assistant at Sharif University of Technology for:

  • Probability & Statistics
  • Linear Algebra
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Machine Learning