Portrait of Reihaneh Rabbany

Reihaneh Rabbany

Core Academic Member
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Assistant Professor, McGill University, School of Computer Science
Research Topics
Data Mining
Graph Neural Networks
Learning on Graphs
Natural Language Processing
Representation Learning

Biography

Reihaneh Rabbany is an assistant professor at the School of Computer Science, McGill University, and a core academic member of Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. She is also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and on the faculty of McGill’s Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.

Before joining McGill, Rabbany was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. She completed her PhD in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta.

Rabbany heads McGill’s Complex Data Lab, where she conducts research at the intersection of network science, data mining and machine learning, with a focus on analyzing real-world interconnected data and social good applications.

Current Students

Master's Research - McGill University
Principal supervisor :
PhD - McGill University
Co-supervisor :
Collaborating Alumni - McGill University
Co-supervisor :
Research Intern - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
Co-supervisor :
PhD - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
Co-supervisor :
Postdoctorate - McGill University
Collaborating researcher
Collaborating researcher - McGill University University
Collaborating researcher - McGill University
Research Intern - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
Master's Research - Université de Montréal
Principal supervisor :
Collaborating researcher - McGill University
Collaborating researcher - Université de Montréal
Principal supervisor :
PhD - McGill University
Research Intern - McGill University
Master's Research - Université de Montréal
Principal supervisor :

Publications

Veracity: An Open-Source AI Fact-Checking System
Taylor Lynn Curtis
Maximilian Puelma Touzel
William Garneau
Manon Gruaz
Mike Pinder
Li Wei Wang
Sukanya Krishna
Luda Cohen
Kellin Pelrine
The proliferation of misinformation poses a significant threat to society, exacerbated by the capabilities of generative AI. This demo paper… (see more) introduces Veracity, an open-source AI system designed to empower individuals to combat misinformation through transparent and accessible fact-checking. Veracity leverages the synergy between Large Language Models (LLMs) and web retrieval agents to analyze user-submitted claims and provide grounded veracity assessments with intuitive explanations. Key features include multilingual support, numerical scoring of claim veracity, and an interactive interface inspired by familiar messaging applications. This paper will showcase Veracity's ability to not only detect misinformation but also explain its reasoning, fostering media literacy and promoting a more informed society.
A Systematic Literature Review of Large Language Model Applications in the Algebra Domain
Are Large Language Models Good Temporal Graph Learners?
Shenyang Huang
Ali Parviz
Emma Kondrup
Zachary Yang
Zifeng Ding
Michael Bronstein
Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently driven significant advancements in Natural Language Processing and various other applications. Wh… (see more)ile a broad range of literature has explored the graph-reasoning capabilities of LLMs, including their use of predictors on graphs, the application of LLMs to dynamic graphs -- real world evolving networks -- remains relatively unexplored. Recent work studies synthetic temporal graphs generated by random graph models, but applying LLMs to real-world temporal graphs remains an open question. To address this gap, we introduce Temporal Graph Talker (TGTalker), a novel temporal graph learning framework designed for LLMs. TGTalker utilizes the recency bias in temporal graphs to extract relevant structural information, converted to natural language for LLMs, while leveraging temporal neighbors as additional information for prediction. TGTalker demonstrates competitive link prediction capabilities compared to existing Temporal Graph Neural Network (TGNN) models. Across five real-world networks, TGTalker performs competitively with state-of-the-art temporal graph methods while consistently outperforming popular models such as TGN and HTGN. Furthermore, TGTalker generates textual explanations for each prediction, thus opening up exciting new directions in explainability and interpretability for temporal link prediction. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/shenyangHuang/TGTalker.
Are Large Language Models Good Temporal Graph Learners?
Shenyang Huang
Ali Parviz
Emma Kondrup
Zachary Yang
Zifeng Ding
Michael Bronstein
Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently driven significant advancements in Natural Language Processing and various other applications. Wh… (see more)ile a broad range of literature has explored the graph-reasoning capabilities of LLMs, including their use of predictors on graphs, the application of LLMs to dynamic graphs -- real world evolving networks -- remains relatively unexplored. Recent work studies synthetic temporal graphs generated by random graph models, but applying LLMs to real-world temporal graphs remains an open question. To address this gap, we introduce Temporal Graph Talker (TGTalker), a novel temporal graph learning framework designed for LLMs. TGTalker utilizes the recency bias in temporal graphs to extract relevant structural information, converted to natural language for LLMs, while leveraging temporal neighbors as additional information for prediction. TGTalker demonstrates competitive link prediction capabilities compared to existing Temporal Graph Neural Network (TGNN) models. Across five real-world networks, TGTalker performs competitively with state-of-the-art temporal graph methods while consistently outperforming popular models such as TGN and HTGN. Furthermore, TGTalker generates textual explanations for each prediction, thus opening up exciting new directions in explainability and interpretability for temporal link prediction. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/shenyangHuang/TGTalker.
Weak Supervision for Real World Graphs
Pratheeksha Nair
From Intuition to Understanding: Using AI Peers to Overcome Physics Misconceptions
Ruben Weijers
Denton Wu
Hannah Betts
Tamara Jacod
Yuxiang Guan
Vidya Sujaya
Kushal Dev
Toshali Goel
William Delooze
Ying Wu
Kellin Pelrine
Generative AI has the potential to transform personalization and accessibility of education. However, it raises serious concerns about accur… (see more)acy and helping students become independent critical thinkers. In this study, we designed a helpful yet fallible AI "Peer" to help students correct fundamental physics misconceptions related to Newtonian mechanic concepts. In contrast to approaches that seek near-perfect accuracy to create an authoritative AI tutor or teacher, we directly inform students that this AI can answer up to 40\% of questions incorrectly. In a randomized controlled trial with 165 students, those who engaged in targeted dialogue with the AI Peer achieved post-test scores that were, on average, 10.5 percentage points higher—with over 20 percentage points higher normalized gain—than a control group that discussed physics history. Qualitative feedback indicated that 91% of the treatment group's AI interactions were rated as helpful. Furthermore, by comparing student performance on pre- and post-test questions about the same concept, along with experts' annotations of the AI interactions, we find initial evidence suggesting the improvement in performance does not depend on the correctness of the AI. With further research, the AI Peer paradigm described here could open new possibilities for how we learn, adapt to, and grow with AI.
A Guide to Misinformation Detection Data and Evaluation
Camille Thibault
Jacob-Junqi Tian
Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski
Taylor Lynn Curtis
James Zhou
Florence Laflamme
Yuxiang Guan
Kellin Pelrine
Misinformation is a complex societal issue, and mitigating solutions are difficult to create due to data deficiencies. To address this probl… (see more)em, we have curated the largest collection of (mis)information datasets in the literature, totaling 75. From these, we evaluated the quality of all of the 36 datasets that consist of statements or claims, as well as the 9 datasets that consists of data in purely paragraph form. We assess these datasets to identify those with solid foundations for empirical work and those with flaws that could result in misleading and non-generalizable results, such as insufficient label quality, spurious correlations. We further provide state-of-the-art baselines on all these datasets, but show that regardless of label quality, categorical labels may no longer give an accurate evaluation of detection model performance. We discuss alternatives to mitigate this problem. Overall, this guide aims to provide a roadmap for obtaining higher quality data and conducting more effective evaluations, ultimately improving research in misinformation detection. All datasets and other artifacts are available at [anonymized].
Rethinking Anti-Misinformation AI
Vidya Sujaya
Kellin Pelrine
Andreea Musulan
This paper takes a position on how anti-misinformation AI works should be developed for the online misinformation context. We observe that t… (see more)he current literature is dominated by works that produce more information for users to process and that this function faces various challenges in bringing meaningful effects to reality. We use anti-misinformation insights from other domains to suggest a redirection of the existing line of work and identify an under-explored opportunity AI can facilitate exploring.
Rethinking Anti-Misinformation AI
Vidya Sujaya
Kellin Pelrine
Andreea Musulan
This paper takes a position on how anti-misinformation AI works should be developed for the online misinformation context. We observe that t… (see more)he current literature is dominated by works that produce more information for users to process and that this function faces various challenges in bringing meaningful effects to reality. We use anti-misinformation insights from other domains to suggest a redirection of the existing line of work and identify an under-explored opportunity AI can facilitate exploring.
PairBench: Are Vision-Language Models Reliable at Comparing What They See?
Aarash Feizi
Sai Rajeswar
Valentina Zantedeschi
Spandana Gella
Joao Monteiro
Understanding how effectively large vision language models (VLMs) compare visual inputs is crucial across numerous applications, yet this fu… (see more)ndamental capability remains insufficiently assessed. While VLMs are increasingly deployed for tasks requiring comparative judgment, including automated evaluation, re-ranking, and retrieval-augmented generation, no systematic framework exists to measure their performance in these scenarios. We present PairBench, a simple framework that evaluates VLMs as customizable similarity tools using widely available image datasets. Our approach introduces four key metrics for reliable comparison: alignment with human annotations, consistency across pair ordering, distribution smoothness, and controllability through prompting. Our analysis reveals that no model consistently excels across all metrics, with each demonstrating distinct strengths and weaknesses. Most concerning is the widespread inability of VLMs to maintain symmetric similarity scores. Interestingly, we demonstrate that performance on our benchmark strongly correlates with popular benchmarks used for more complex tasks, while providing additional metrics into controllability, smoothness and ordering. This makes PairBench a unique and comprehensive framework to evaluate the performance of VLMs for automatic evaluation depending on the task.
PairBench: A Systematic Framework for Selecting Reliable Judge VLMs
Aarash Feizi
Sai Rajeswar
Spandana Gella
Valentina Zantedeschi
Joao Monteiro
As large vision language models (VLMs) are increasingly used as automated evaluators, understanding their ability to effectively compare dat… (see more)a pairs as instructed in the prompt becomes essential. To address this, we present PairBench, a low-cost framework that systematically evaluates VLMs as customizable similarity tools across various modalities and scenarios. Through PairBench, we introduce four metrics that represent key desiderata of similarity scores: alignment with human annotations, consistency for data pairs irrespective of their order, smoothness of similarity distributions, and controllability through prompting. Our analysis demonstrates that no model, whether closed- or open-source, is superior on all metrics; the optimal choice depends on an auto evaluator's desired behavior (e.g., a smooth vs. a sharp judge), highlighting risks of widespread adoption of VLMs as evaluators without thorough assessment. For instance, the majority of VLMs struggle with maintaining symmetric similarity scores regardless of order. Additionally, our results show that the performance of VLMs on the metrics in PairBench closely correlates with popular benchmarks, showcasing its predictive power in ranking models.
PairBench: A Systematic Framework for Selecting Reliable Judge VLMs
Aarash Feizi
Sai Rajeswar
Spandana Gella
Valentina Zantedeschi
Joao Monteiro
As large vision language models (VLMs) are increasingly used as automated evaluators, understanding their ability to effectively compare dat… (see more)a pairs as instructed in the prompt becomes essential. To address this, we present PairBench, a low-cost framework that systematically evaluates VLMs as customizable similarity tools across various modalities and scenarios. Through PairBench, we introduce four metrics that represent key desiderata of similarity scores: alignment with human annotations, consistency for data pairs irrespective of their order, smoothness of similarity distributions, and controllability through prompting. Our analysis demonstrates that no model, whether closed- or open-source, is superior on all metrics; the optimal choice depends on an auto evaluator's desired behavior (e.g., a smooth vs. a sharp judge), highlighting risks of widespread adoption of VLMs as evaluators without thorough assessment. For instance, the majority of VLMs struggle with maintaining symmetric similarity scores regardless of order. Additionally, our results show that the performance of VLMs on the metrics in PairBench closely correlates with popular benchmarks, showcasing its predictive power in ranking models.