Poorya Selkghafari

University of Guelph

Thesis: Word of Mouth as A Network of Narratives: A New Framework to Study Public Discourse’s Impact on Product Performance.

Research Interests and Future Goals: Data mining, text mining, Bayesian statistics, agent based modelling.

Fun fact about you: I originally come from Iran, a beautiful country renowned for its exceptional cultural heritage, ancient history and unrealized potentials.

I did my bachelors in engineering and masters in business administration at Sharif University of Technology and subsequently amassed seven years of valuable work experience at different positions in marketing departments, before relocating Canada to pursue my Ph.D. in marketing at University of Guelph.

Leveraging my expertise in marketing analytics and a programming, I embarked on my Ph.D. journey by focusing on building statistical and machine learning models to study word of mouth and textual data across different platforms. Currently in my second year, I am simultaneously working on two projects. One of them is related to detecting important features of engaging and persuasive writing styles and the other one is about studying word of mouth as an interconnected network of narratives and analysing its impact on economic outcomes like sales in the context of gluten-free food products.