Computer Science
Research Interests
As a data scientist, I am interested in applying my data-analytic skills to understanding societal phenomena. I study how people interact on different social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to reach a fundamental understanding of real-world phenomena. These interactions provide a measure of public opinion and as such are used to drive informed decisions. I get drawn to tackling problems that have a greater prevalence in communities including gender-based violence and hate speech. In essence, I do social computing for social good.
Mentoring Experiences
Mentoring an undergraduate is the best gift you can give to them and to yourself. It is not just about showing someone how to accomplish technical work but paving the road together, exploring different things, and optimally reaching creativity peaks. This past year, I mentored two undergraduate women majoring in Computer Science, and we worked on two projects pertaining to gender-based violence and hate speech. This mentoring journey has resulted in two of the best moments in my career. The first was when we got the acceptance of our gender-based violence study which was published in a top computer science conference with an acceptance rate of 14%. The second was when I read my undergraduate’s nomination letter for me. I felt that I made a long-lasting difference in her education experience.
What the Award Means to Her
This award strengthened my belief in the role of mentoring. Today and in the future, I hope to continue contributing to eradicating the barrier between women and computer science. By involving women during their early education phases with state-of-the-art research projects, we will be able to increase their self-efficacy and increase the percentage of women in the field of Computer Science. If there is one thing that I learned from this experience, it would be that having a great mentor makes you a great mentor. I learned by example from my adviser Elizabeth Belding. She played a huge role in redefining what mentoring means to me and showed me by real-life examples how mentoring creates an infinite resonance and culture of mentoring.