Zainab Iftikhar
I’m a rising fourth-year PhD candidate in Computer Science at Brown University, where I am advised by Jeff Huang.
My research focuses on creating personalized systems to support social data-driven self-reflection. By applying computational techniques to social data, my work aims to evaluate, enhance, and build human-centered AI systems to address critical societal challenges.
My systems have been deployed in healthcare [1][2], education, legal aid for gender-based violence [3], and for the marginalized population in the Global South.
Previously, I was a Software Engineer at Pantera Energy and then a Research Associate at HCI for Inclusion, Well-being & Learning Lab. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from National University of Computer & Emerging Science, Lahore.
current projects
news
Aug 17, 2024 | Selected for the 2024 CSCW Doctoral Consortium (San José, Costa Rica) |
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May 17, 2024 | Can AI understand empathy? See our talk at CHI’24 (Hawaii, USA) |
May 06, 2024 | I received the Paris Kanellakis Graduate Fellowship Award for the Academic Year 2023-2024! |
Jan 22, 2024 | Invited to talk about The Role of Human, AI and Design in Mental Health Access at Carnegie Mellon University |
May 31, 2023 | Passed my comprehensive exams at Brown. I’m now a Ph.D. Candidate! |
selected publications
- Therapy as an NLP Task: Psychologists’ Comparison of LLMs and Human Peers in CBTarXiv preprint arXiv:2409.02244, 2024