The School of Computer Science is pleased to present…
A Goal-Driven Evolutionary Framework for the Team Formation Problem in Social Networks
MSc Thesis Defence by: Kiana Lesan Pezeshki
Date: Friday, September 24th, 2025
Time: 9:30 AM
Location: Essex Hall, Room 122
The Team Formation Problem (TFP) in social networks is a complex challenge in computer science with broad applications in various domains such as organizational management, human resource management, project collaboration, healthcare, education, and much more. The primary goal is to assign experts to projects in an efficient way to accomplish the tasks successfully, but this becomes increasingly complicated as projects and team sizes grow. Forming effective teams is an NP-hard optimization problem that must balance organizational objectives, human factors, and fairness. Traditional approaches often emphasize skill matching while overlooking personal goals, collaboration dynamics, and professional development.
This thesis presents a goal-driven evolutionary framework for team formation by integrating an additional dimension of individual development plans (IDPs) along with communication costs and skill alignment. We believe the inclusion of IDPs improves employees' satisfaction and retention, promotes fairness, reduces bias arising from historical collaboration data, and supports individual growth alongside organizational success.
Through evaluations under multiple scenarios, results demonstrate that this framework consistently outperforms baseline models in terms of team quality.
Internal Reader: Dr. Mehdi Kargar
External Reader: Dr. Bharat Maheshwari
Advisor: Dr. Pooya Moradian Zadeh
Chair: Dr. Saeed Samet