Shaden Shaar

Shaden Shaar

PhD Candidate @ Cornell University

I'm a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at Cornell, advised by Claire Cardie, working on long-form generation in multi-modal settings — specifically long-form video QA and narrative understanding and clinical NLP, with a focus on the semantic coherence that makes extended reasoning possible.

Before Cornell, I spent two years at QCRI on automated fact-checking and claim detection, COVID-19 misinformation, and propaganda and persuasion detection, co-organizing several editions of the CLEF CheckThat! shared-task series — work that shaped how I think about machines reading carefully, at scale.

Shaden Shaar

Education

  • 2021 — present

    PhD, Computer Science
    Cornell University · Ithaca, NY
    Minor: Applied Mathematics

  • 2021 — 2024

    M.S., Computer Science
    Cornell University · Ithaca, NY

  • 2015 — 2019

    B.S., Computer Science
    Carnegie Mellon University · Doha, Qatar
    Minor: Mathematics · University Honors

Awards & Honors

  • 2021
    Cornell University Fellowship
  • 2020
    ACL 2020 Best Demo — Honorable Mention (Prta)
  • 2019
    Graduated with University Honors, Carnegie Mellon University
  • 2017
    Dean's List — Carnegie Mellon (F15, S16, F16, F17)
  • 2015
    50% Academic Merit Scholarship, Carnegie Mellon University

Work Experience

  • May 2025 — Aug 2025

    Applied Scientist Intern
    Zillow Group · Remote

  • Jan 2025 — May 2025

    Machine Learning Research Engineer Intern
    Scale AI · Remote

  • May 2022 — Aug 2022

    AI/ML Research Intern
    Apple · Cupertino, CA

  • Jul 2019 — Aug 2021

    Research Assistant
    Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU · Doha, Qatar

  • May 2018 — Aug 2018

    Research Intern
    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University · Pittsburgh, PA

  • May 2017 — Jun 2018

    Part-Time Research Assistant
    Carnegie Mellon University · Doha, Qatar

Publications

33 papers across 9 research threads. Filter by project or search to narrow down. Also on Google Scholar.

33 of 33 publications

2026

  • Thematic Analysis of Accepted Exception Requests for Heart Transplant Candidates Using a Large Language Model
    J. Frye, Shaden Shaar, C. Cardie, E. DeFilippis, D. Estrin, G. Sayer, N. Uriel, et al.
    JHLT·Journal
  • Shaden Shaar, B. Thymes, S. Chaixanien, C. Cardie, B. Hariharan
    CVPR·Conference

2025

  • Are Triggers Needed for Document-Level Event Extraction?
    Shaden Shaar, W. Chen, M. Chatterjee, B. Wang, W. Zhao, C. Cardie
    TACL·Journal·2 citations

2024

  • Pungene at DialAM-2024: Identification of Propositional and Illocutionary Relations
    S. Chaixanien, E. Choi, Shaden Shaar, C. Cardie
    ArgMining·Workshop·2 citations
  • Edward Said at Touché: Human Value Detection Using Transformers and Upsampling
    A. N. Aydin, Shaden Shaar, C. Cardie
    CLEF·Workshop·1 citation

2022

  • Overview of the CLEF–2022 CheckThat! Lab on Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic and Fake News Detection
    P. Nakov, A. Barrón-Cedeño, G. Da San Martino, F. Alam, J. M. Struss, T. Mandl, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    CLEF·Conference·90 citations
  • The CLEF-2022 CheckThat! Lab on Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic and Fake News Detection
    P. Nakov, A. Barrón-Cedeño, G. Da San Martino, F. Alam, J. M. Struss, T. Mandl, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    ECIR·Conference·88 citations
  • Overview of the CLEF-2022 CheckThat! Lab Task 2 on Detecting Previously Fact-Checked Claims
    P. Nakov, G. Da San Martino, F. Alam, Shaden Shaar, H. Mubarak, N. Babulkov
    CEUR·Workshop·24 citations
  • Overview of the CLEF-2022 CheckThat! Lab Task 1 on Identifying Relevant Claims in Tweets
    P. Nakov, A. Barrón-Cedeño, G. Da San Martino, F. Alam, R. Míguez, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    CEUR·Workshop·83 citations
  • A Second Pandemic? Analysis of Fake News about COVID-19 Vaccines in Qatar
    P. Nakov, F. Alam, Shaden Shaar, G. Da San Martino, Y. Zhang
    NAACL·Findings·Conference·33 citations
  • Assisting the Human Fact-Checkers: Detecting All Previously Fact-Checked Claims in a Document
    Shaden Shaar, N. Georgiev, F. Alam, G. Da San Martino, A. Mohamed, P. Nakov
    EMNLP·Findings·Conference·45 citations
  • Cross-Lingual Emotion Detection
    S. Hassan, Shaden Shaar, K. Darwish
    LREC·Conference·32 citations
  • A Survey on Multimodal Disinformation Detection
    F. Alam, S. Cresci, T. Chakraborty, F. Silvestri, D. Dimitrov, G. Da San Martino, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    COLING·Conference·224 citations

2021

  • Findings of the NLP4IF-2021 Shared Tasks on Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic and Censorship Detection
    Shaden Shaar, F. Alam, G. Da San Martino, A. Nikolov, W. Zaghouani, P. Nakov, et al.
    NLP4IF·Workshop·52 citations
  • Overview of the CLEF–2021 CheckThat! Lab on Detecting Check-Worthy Claims, Previously Fact-Checked Claims, and Fake News
    P. Nakov, G. Da San Martino, T. Elsayed, A. Barrón-Cedeño, R. Míguez, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    CLEF·Conference·119 citations
  • 인간 팩트체커를 보조하는 팩트체크 자동화 (Automated Fact-Checking for Assisting Human Fact-Checkers)
    P. Nakov, D. Corney, M. Hasanain, F. Alam, T. Elsayed, A. Barrón-Cedeño, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    FACT·Journal
  • COVID-19 in Bulgarian Social Media: Factuality, Harmfulness, Propaganda, and Framing
    P. Nakov, F. Alam, Shaden Shaar, G. Da San Martino, Y. Zhang
    RANLP·Conference·29 citations
  • Detecting Propaganda Techniques in Memes
    D. Dimitrov, B. B. Ali, Shaden Shaar, F. Alam, F. Silvestri, H. Firooz, P. Nakov, et al.
    ACL·Conference·135 citations
  • BeaSku at CheckThat! 2021: Fine-tuning Sentence BERT with Triplet Loss and Limited Data
    B. Skuczynska, Shaden Shaar, J. Spenader, P. Nakov
    CLEF·Workshop·8 citations
  • Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic in Social Media: A Holistic Perspective and a Call to Arms
    F. Alam, F. Dalvi, Shaden Shaar, N. Durrani, H. Mubarak, A. Nikolov, et al.
    ICWSM·Conference·163 citations
  • SemEval-2021 Task 6: Detection of Persuasion Techniques in Texts and Images
    D. Dimitrov, B. B. Ali, Shaden Shaar, F. Alam, F. Silvestri, H. Firooz, P. Nakov, et al.
    SemEval·Workshop·173 citations
  • The Role of Context in Detecting Previously Fact-Checked Claims
    Shaden Shaar, F. Alam, G. Da San Martino, P. Nakov
    RANLP·Conference·52 citations
  • The CLEF-2021 CheckThat! Lab on Detecting Check-Worthy Claims, Previously Fact-Checked Claims, and Fake News
    P. Nakov, G. Da San Martino, T. Elsayed, A. Barrón-Cedeño, R. Míguez, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    ECIR·Conference·155 citations
  • Automated Fact-Checking for Assisting Human Fact-Checkers
    P. Nakov, D. Corney, M. Hasanain, F. Alam, T. Elsayed, A. Barrón-Cedeño, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    IJCAI·Conference·386 citations
  • Overview of the CLEF-2021 CheckThat! Lab Task 2 on Detecting Previously Fact-Checked Claims in Tweets and Political Debates
    Shaden Shaar, F. Haouari, W. Mansour, M. Hasanain, N. Babulkov, F. Alam, et al.
    CEUR·Workshop·42 citations
  • Overview of the CLEF-2021 CheckThat! Lab Task 1 on Check-Worthiness Estimation in Tweets and Political Debates
    F. Alam, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    CEUR·Workshop·82 citations

2020

  • Overview of CheckThat! 2020: Automatic Identification and Verification of Claims in Social Media
    A. Barrón-Cedeño, T. Elsayed, P. Nakov, G. Da San Martino, M. Hasanain, Shaden Shaar, et al.
    CLEF·Conference·186 citations
  • G. Da San Martino, Shaden Shaar, Y. Zhang, S. Yu, A. Barrón-Cedeño, P. Nakov
    ACL·Conference·93 citations
  • That Is a Known Lie: Detecting Previously Fact-Checked Claims
    Shaden Shaar, G. Da San Martino, N. Babulkov, P. Nakov
    ACL·Conference·241 citations
  • Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic: Modeling the Perspective of Journalists, Fact-Checkers, Social Media Platforms, Policy Makers, and the Society
    F. Alam, Shaden Shaar, F. Dalvi, H. Sajjad, A. Nikolov, H. Mubarak, G. Da San Martino, et al.
    EMNLP·Findings·Conference·233 citations
  • Overview of CheckThat! 2020 English: Automatic Identification and Verification of Claims in Social Media
    Shaden Shaar, A. Nikolov, N. Babulkov, F. Alam, A. Barrón-Cedeño, T. Elsayed, et al.
    CLEF·Workshop·79 citations

2018

  • Interactive Evaluation of Classifiers under Limited Resources
    S. Hassan, Shaden Shaar, B. Raj, S. Razak
    ICMLA·Conference·6 citations
  • Group Identification in Crowded Environments Using Proximity Sensing
    Shaden Shaar, S. Razak, F. Dalvi, S. A. H. Moosavi
    LCN·Conference

Teaching

Cornell University

  • Fall 2022
    CS 4740: Natural Language Processing
  • Spring 2022
    Introduction to Machine Learning

Carnegie Mellon University

  • Fall 2018 & Spring 2019
    11-785: Introduction to Deep Learning
  • Spring 2018 & Spring 2019
    15-251: Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science
  • Fall 2017
    15-213: Introduction to Computer Systems
  • Fall 2016 & Fall 2017
    15-112: Fundamentals of Programming
  • Spring 2016
    21-127: Concepts of Mathematics

Contact

Happy to hear from potential collaborators or anyone curious about the work. The best way to reach me is by email: sshaar31@gmail.com. A printable CV is available at /cv.