Zainab Iftikhar

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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

Sochiatrist An ML-driven system for extracting, analyzing and visualizing social messaging for wellbeing
Cheeseburger Therapy An accessible chat-based platform that provides peer support through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to scale mental health, a collaboration with the Cheese team.


news

Aug 17, 2024 Selected for the 2024 CSCW Doctoral Consortium (San José, Costa Rica)
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

  1. Therapy as an NLP Task: Psychologists’ Comparison of LLMs and Human Peers in CBT
    Zainab Iftikhar, Sean Ransom, Amy Xiao, and Jeff Huang
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.02244, 2024
  2. CHI
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    Machine and Human Understanding of Empathy in Online Peer Support: A Cognitive Behavioral Approach
    Sara Syed*, Zainab Iftikhar*, Amy Wei Xiao, and Jeff Huang
    In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2024
  3. CHI
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    “Together but not together”: Evaluating Typing Indicators for Interaction-Rich Communication
    Zainab Iftikhar, Yumeng Ma, and Jeff Huang
    In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2023
  4. JMIR
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    Technology, privacy, and user opinions of COVID-19 mobile apps for contact tracing: Systematic search and content analysis
    Mahmoud Elkhodr, Omar Mubin, Zainab Iftikhar, Maleeha Masood, and 3 more authors
    J Med Internet Res, 2021