Mahdi Tavassoli Kejani

Mahdi Tavassoli Kejani, Fadi Dornaika, Charlotte Laclau et al.

In recent years, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have achieved remarkable success in tasks such as node classification, link prediction, and graph representation learning. However, they remain susceptible to biases that can arise not only from node attributes but also from the graph structure itself. Addressing fairness in GNNs has therefore emerged as a critical research challenge. In this work, we propose a novel model for training fairness-aware GNNs by improving the counterfactual augmented fair graph neural network framework (CAF). Specifically, our approach introduces a two-phase training strategy: in the first phase, we edit the graph to increase homophily ratio with respect to class labels while reducing homophily ratio with respect to sensitive attribute labels; in the second phase, we integrate a modified supervised contrastive loss and environmental loss into the optimization process, enabling the model to jointly improve predictive performance and fairness. Experiments on five real-world datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms CAF and several state-of-the-art graph-based learning methods in both classification accuracy and fairness metrics.

Mahdi Tavassoli Kejani, Fadi Dornaika, Jean-Michel Loubes

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have demonstrated exceptional efficacy in relational learning tasks, including node classification and link prediction. However, their application raises significant fairness concerns, as GNNs can perpetuate and even amplify societal biases against protected groups defined by sensitive attributes such as race or gender. These biases are often inherent in the node features, structural topology, and message-passing mechanisms of the graph itself. A critical limitation of existing fairness-aware GNN methods is their reliance on the strong assumption that sensitive attributes are fully available for all nodes during training--a condition that poses a practical impediment due to privacy concerns and data collection constraints. To address this gap, we propose a novel, model-agnostic fairness regularization framework designed for the realistic scenario where sensitive attributes are only partially available. Our approach formalizes a fairness-aware objective function that integrates both equal opportunity and statistical parity as differentiable regularization terms. Through a comprehensive empirical evaluation across five real-world benchmark datasets, we demonstrate that the proposed method significantly mitigates bias across key fairness metrics while maintaining competitive node classification performance. Results show that our framework consistently outperforms baseline models in achieving a favorable fairness-accuracy trade-off, with minimal degradation in predictive accuracy. The datasets and source code will be publicly released at https://github.com/mtavassoli/GNN-FC.

Mahdi Tavassoli Kejani, Fadi Dornaika, Jean-Michel Loubes

In recent years, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have made significant advancements, particularly in tasks such as node classification, link prediction, and graph representation. However, challenges arise from biases that can be hidden not only in the node attributes but also in the connections between entities. Therefore, ensuring fairness in graph neural network learning has become a critical problem. To address this issue, we propose a novel model for training fairness-aware GNN, which enhances the Counterfactual Augmented Fair Graph Neural Network Framework (CAF). Our approach integrates Supervised Contrastive Loss and Environmental Loss to enhance both accuracy and fairness. Experimental validation on three real datasets demonstrates the superiority of our proposed model over CAF and several other existing graph-based learning methods.