Navid Zarrabi - Ph.D. Candidate in Robotics @ Toronto Metropolitan University

From a high school line-follower competition to a PhD candidacy at Toronto Metropolitan University today, my career has been a continuous evolution in robotics and AI. With over six years of professional experience in industrial automation complemented by deep academic research in mechatronics and autonomous navigation, I bridge the gap between theoretical innovation and rugged, real-world application. I am dedicated to advancing the future of human-machine interaction, leveraging a decade and a half of technical intuition to develop the next generation of autonomous systems and intelligent mobile robotics.

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News

Jun 2026

[Award] Excited to share that our team, Skinova, tied for 2nd place at HackMedTech 2026 while representing Toronto Metropolitan University among teams across Canada. Read more here.

May 2026

[Presentation] Addressing the Sensing Bottleneck in Field Robotics: Ultrasound-Based Microplastic Detection. I presented my research at the CSME-CFDSC-CSR 2026 International Congress at the University of British Columbia, sharing work on high-frequency ultrasound and machine learning for microplastic identification and monitoring in marine environments.

Apr 2026

[Award] MIE Graduate Studies Excellence Award issued by Toronto Metropolitan University. Recognized for outstanding academic performance and research excellence in the PhD program within the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

Mar 2026

[Publication] I’m excited to share that our latest research has been published in the Nature Portfolio journal npj Emerging Contaminants. Read the paper here.

Featured Publications

High-frequency ultrasound combined with deep learning enables identification and size estimation of microplastics

N Zarrabi, EM Strohm, H Rezvani, M Lisondra, N Yousefi, S Saeedi, ...

npj Emerging Contaminants 2 (1), 9 | 2026

H-SPAR: Hydrodynamic-aware Simulation for Particle Transport and Autonomous Robots

Navid Zarrabi, Nariman Yousefi, Sajad Saeedi | Under Review, 2025

Submitted 2026

Analysis image for the microplastics and nanoplastics paper

Analysis of microplastics and nanoplastics emerged from polyethylene bags and polyethylene terephthalate bottles by an artificial intelligence-enabled tool

H Rezvani, M Kapadia, J Costantino, N Zarrabi, S Saeedi, N Yousefi

Environmental Pollution, 127453 | 2025

SEM image for microplastics and nanoplastics detection

Morphological detection and classification of microplastics and nanoplastics emerged from consumer products by deep learning

H Rezvani, N Zarrabi, I Mehta, C Kolios, HA Jaafar, CH Kao, S Saeedi, ...

arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.13688 | 2024

SLAM ICRoM image for robot localization performance paper

Robot localization performance using different SLAM approaches in a homogeneous indoor environment

N Zarrabi, R Fesharakifard, MB Menhaj

2019 7th International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICRoM), 338-344 | 2019