a place of mind

Behnam Mo

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Contents

Employment

• University of Texas at Dallas · Jindal School of Management 2025—Present

Assistant Professor of Marketing Dallas, TX

Education

• Carnegie Mellon University · Tepper School of Business

PhD in Quantitative Marketing and Management Science
Dissertation: “Human-AI Interaction in the Era of Large Language Models (LLMs)”

• Carnegie Mellon University · Tepper School of Business

MSc in Marketing

• Aryamehr1 University of Technology · School of Management and Economics

MBA and MSc in Operations and Supply Chain Management
Thesis: “Anomaly Detection using Unsupervised Machine Learning (ML)”

• Iran University of Science and Technology

BSc in Electrical Engineering (Digital Telecommunication Systems)

Awards

  • Meritorious Reviewer Award, INFORMS Journal on Computing (2025)
  • Herbert A. Simon Doctoral Dissertation Award ($4,000)
  • BNY Mellon Fellowship at Center for Intelligent Business (CIB) for developing BEACON, an LLM-powered tool that enhances small business growth ($10,000)
  • Distinguished Presidential Scholarship Fund (by TCS) for work on Large Language Models and AI research ($20,400)
  • Dipankar and Sharmila Chakravarti Doctoral Fellowship Award for outstanding contributions to research in Marketing
  • Paul and James Wang-Sercomm Presidential Graduate Fellowship Award ($4,000)
  • Dean’s Research Fund
  • William Larimer Mellon Ph.D. Fellowship

Research

Large Language Models (LLMs)

  • Mohammadi, B. (2025). Human-AI interaction in the era of large language models (LLMs) [Doctoral dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University].
  • Mohammadi, B. (2024). Explaining large language models decisions using Shapley values (arXiv:2404.01332). arXiv.
    • Developed a model-agnostic framework for interpreting LLMs’ decisions
    • Created a novel method for prompt optimization and prompt engineering
    • Discovered and characterized the “token noise” effect, useful for designing LLM-powered recommendation systems
    • 🎬 Video Presentation
  • Mohammadi, B. (2024). Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models (arXiv:2406.05587). arXiv.
    • Demonstrated the trade-offs between safety and creativity of LLMs
    • Built semantic diversity measurement using SentenceBERT and t-SNE
    • Identified RLHF as the root cause of LLM “mode collapse” (lack of creativity)
    • Proposed architectural solutions to preserve model creativity post-alignment
      • Implemented proof-of-concept using Apple’s MLX framework (CUDA alternative for Apple Silicon)
    • 🎬 Video Presentation

AI Economics & Regulation

  • Mohammadi, B., Malik, N., Derdenger, T., & Srinivasan, K. (2025). Regulating explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) may harm consumers. Marketing Science, 44(3), 711–724.
    • Conducted the first comprehensive analysis of XAI regulation impact on business operations and consumer welfare
    • Developed strategies for companies to maintain competitive advantage while complying with AI regulations
    • Created framework for businesses to optimize AI transparency based on market conditions
  • Mohammadi, B., & Talebian, M. (2019). Analyzing the role of Apple-Samsung lawsuits on pricing and marketing strategies of the two companies. New Marketing Research Journal, 9(4), 171–205.

Agentic AI & Systems

  • Mohammadi, B. (2025). Pel: A programming language for orchestrating AI agents [Working paper].
  • Mohammadi, B. (2025). BEACON: Business enhancement through adaptive coordinated networks [Working paper].

Conferences

  • Bass FORMS Conference, UT Dallas, Jindal School of Management (2025)
  • AI/ML Conference, Yale University, Yale School of Management (2024)
  • CIST (Conference on Information Systems and Technology), Seattle, WA (2024)
  • Deloitte IMPACT AI Conference, CMU Tepper (2024), 🎬 My Talk
  • ISMS Marketing Science Conference, University of Miami, Herbert Business School (2023)
  • AI/ML Conference, Harvard University, Harvard Business School (2022)
  • MSP Conference, New Castle University (2022)
  • ISMS Marketing Science Conference, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business (2022)
  • ISMS Marketing Science Conference, University of Rochester, Simon Business School (2021)

Teaching

  • At UT Dallas:
    • AI-Driven Content Creation and Campaign Management (Undergraduate)
    • Artificial Intelligence in Marketing (Graduate level)
  • At CMU:
    • MBA Math Camp (Calculus, Statistics, Algebra), Summer of 2023
  • Teaching Assistant:
    • At CMU
      • UBA/Dean’s Office: Experiential Learning Course (Burton Hollifield)
      • Pricing Strategy (Peter Boatwright)
      • Catastrophic Risk Analysis (Jay Apt)
      • Marketing Analytics (Kannan Srinivasan)
      • Analytical Marketing (Alan Montgomery)
      • Interactive Marketing (Alan Montgomery)
      • Undergraduate Core Marketing Course (Peter Stuetgen)
    • At Sharif University of Technology
      • Research Methods (Instructor of Econometrics)
      • Marketing Research (Shirin Aslani)
      • Marketing Management (Naser Karami)
      • Strategic Planning (Arash Khalili Nasr)
      • Operations Management (Mehran Sepehri)
      • Organizational Behavior (Golnaz Tajeddin)

Service

  • Ad Hoc Reviewer:
    • Management Science (2025)
    • Journal of Marketing Research (2025)
    • INFORMS Journal on Computing (2025)
    • Production and Operations Management (2025)

Book Publication

  • Behnam Mohammadi et al., “Information Technology for Better Life”, Avaye Ghalam Publications, (ISBN: 978-600-7542-16-3)

Technical Skills

Programming Languages:
Python, Elixir, Lisp, Bash, VBA

Large Language Models

  • Constrained generation using Context-Free Grammars (GBNF)
  • Structured output and function-calling (Python Pydantic, Instructor, and JSON Schemas)
  • Finetuning and LoRA
  • GGUF and quantization of models and KV-cache
  • Running, serving, and modifying local LLMs (Llama, Gemma, Mistral/Mixtral, Phi, Qwen, Command r series)
  • Embeddings and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Data Science:
Scikit-learn, SciPy, NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Plotly, SymPy
DevOps and Automation:
FastAPI, TailScale, Vim and Neovim, VSCode, Git, Docker, Selenium, HomeBrew, Raycast, BetterTouchTool, HammerSpoon, Karabiner Elements

AI Projects/Experience

Open-Source Contributions & Personal Projects

  • Contributed to llama.cpp (68k+ stars on GitHub), the leading open-source LLM engine
  • Created callama, a Python interface for distributed llama.cpp deployment and management
  • Developed asky, a context-aware macOS AI assistant for real-time text analysis and processing across applications

Research & Development Projects

  • Developed grAIdient, an LLM-powered interactive educational platform of simulated AI agents, improving student performance in business courses
  • Engineered customer service training simulator for PNC Bank using transaction-based persona generation
  • Created a framework for systematic experimentation on LLM behavior patterns and cognitive biases
  • Implemented word-of-mouth marketing simulation using multi-agent LLM

Creator of Pel—the First Programming Language for Language Models

  • Designed a consistent, elegant syntax, optimal for transformer models training
  • Implemented the Pel interpreter in Python as the host language
  • Developed REPeL: Pel’s REPL (Read, Eval, Print, Loop), an interactive programming environment with advanced error handling features like “restarts”

BEACON (Business Enhancement through Adaptive COordinated Networks)

  • The first Agentic AI framework that enables agent orchestration and coordination all in Pel code
  • Simulated firm departments through hierarchical specialized AI agents
  • Provided wholistic, cutting-edge, and transparent insights to business owners

  1. A.K.A “Sharif” ↩