Invited to attend #TweetsforChange
I invited to attend “Tweets for Change” speaker series in Washington, DC which was organized by Twitter. https://fortheculturetour.splashthat.com
Being a Part of ArabWIC Conference in Lebanon
I am very thrilled to be a part of the committee of the Fifth International Conference on Arab Women in Computing in Lebanon. I will be serving on the research track committee. I will be also serving on the social media committee.
Research experience with a team at QCRI
Since then I’ve been interested in exploring applications for leveraging artificial intelligence to improve people’s life. I was very delighted to get involved in a research group at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) with the Social Computing group during Spring 2017. Led by Dr. Luis Fernandez Luque, I got an opportunity to work on a project that aimed to provide health education to mothers to maintain a healthy weight for their children. For the purpose of this study, we developed a chatbot in order to utilize technology to support parents’ engagement to sustain the weight loss of their children.
The project involved three stages. The first stage was understanding the preferences and needs to build a comprehensive knowledge base for chatbot. In order to explore parents’ needs and interests, the research team created WhatsApp group. The first stage was to analyze the contents of the group and the group dynamics among parents. The findings of this study led to a design specification and more tailored contents to build a Telegram bot. The second stage of this project was designing and implementing a chatbot. The chatbot built was delivered to mothers in Qatar where they took a part of. Regular messages were sent to foster education to the mothers about their children food consumption, diet and exercise.
Submitted a Journal Manuscript at IJHCI
Participated at AMIA 2016
I have been selected for the AMIA 2016 Annual Symposium Student Volunteer Program.
Presented my work at iConference 2016
I have worked on projects that aim to explore the online search behaviors of Arab users with the goal of informing global technology design and policy. This work is a Google funded research project to explore the search behavior and challenges of non-native speakers of English when searching in the English language. The preliminary findings suggest a strong disparity exists between the language distribution of Web content and the representation of speakers of different languages among Web users. In particular, I examined the search behaviors of Arab speakers when searching online in English and measure the differences when searching in Arabic vs. in English. The results of this research were presented at iConference 2016 and the paper can be found (here).
Organized the Women in Technology forum at KKU
I am very thrilled to organize the Women in Technology forum at King Khalid University on Jan 27, 2016; a regional event which gathered thought leaders from across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to share insights on issues related to advancing the role of women in computing and exploring how to support women in technology in contributing to the national transformation plan in the Kingdom. In this event, I presented on my experience about my involvement in ArabWIC and its role in advancing the careers of women in technology in my local context. Attendees had the opportunity to connect with others interested in information technology, software engineering, information systems and computer science. Here is the slides of my presentation. To read more about the ArabWIC Saudi Arabia Chapter participation at this event, click here.
