I'm broadly interested in researching networked systems and their societal impacts. My current research centers on digital development & equity, countering misinformation, cloud/edge computing and the interplay between technology and public policy.
Research: Cognitive Reflection & Misinformation
Interview: Bridging the Digital Divide
Research: Rethinking Web for Affordability
What ChatGPT means for Higher Education?
August 2024 [ACL]: We developed a novel Urdu deepfake audio dataset targeting two spoofing attacks (Tacotron, VITS TTS). The dataset construction involves careful consideration of phonemic cover and balance. AASIST-L evaluation yields EERs of 0.495 (TTS) and 0.524 (Tacotron), with speaker variation. A human study shows limited detection ability, with 1 in 3 fake samples mistaken as real. Our work aids deepfake detection in low-resource languages, bridging critical gap in existing datasets.
June, 2023 [Journal of Development Economics]: Misinformation is a growing concern in developing countries with potentially far-reaching consequences. We evaluate whether educational interventions improve discernment of news using a randomized control trial. We find no effect of video-based general educational messages. However, when such video messages is combined with personalized feedback, accuracy rate improves. You can read the full paper here.
September, 2022 [ACM IMC]: Today, more than 200 million users use Android Go, a mobile operating system for entry-level smartphones. Yet little is known about its impact on mobile Web performance. We conducted the first empirical study about the causal impact of Android Go using controlled experiments and a set of methodological approaches from the econometrics literature.
July, 2022 [Harvard Kennedy Misinformation Review]: The uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic was fueled by the COVID-19 “infodemic.” We evaluated the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection and the ability to discern between true and false COVID-19 information using a random sample of 621 low- and middle-income users in Pakistan. We find that higher cognitive reflection test scores are associated with greater truth discernment for COVID-19 headlines, less trust but greater use of formal information sources, and greater demand for KN95 masks.
Recent News
It was a truly enriching experience teaching an 8-session module on Health Data Science as part of the Certificate for Health Professions Education (CHPE) program at LUMS! The program, which is recognized by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), brought together an impressive cohort of 62 health professionals representing 60 diverse hospitals and medical universities across 15 cities in Pakistan over a comprehensive 6-month period. The opportunity to bridge the gap between clinical expertise and data analytics created a uniquely engaging learning environment. What made this experience particularly special was the diverse perspectives these healthcare practitioners brought to the classroom.
It was a pleasure serving as Co-Chair of ACM CoNEXT 2024. The opportunity to bring together such an outstanding program was humbling. I was particularly inspired by the brilliant young researchers who shared their work and the sense of community we built together through engaging discussions.
Delighted to share that our work on developing the first Urdu deepfake audio dataset for deepfake detection has been accepted at ACL 2024 Findings!
Our work on the first large-scale analysis of the adoption of third-party serving infrastructures in government digital services will appear in ACM IMC 2024. The study builds on data collected across 61 countries spanning every continent and region, capturing over 82% of the world’s Internet population.
🎉 We recently launched GradEcho, a forum to democratize access to high-quality advice and mentorship related to graduate school. If you are looking for advice on graduate school applications, tips on building your profile, or guidance on finalizing your university, you'll find a community of professors, admission committee members, and graduate students ready to help at GradEcho. Sign up here: (https://gradecho.actualaiz.com/)
Delivered a mini-course on Health Data Science as Part of the LUMS Certificate in Health Professions Education (CHPE), Feb-Mar, 2024. It was a pleasure interacting with nearly 50 doctors from the most reputable hospitals in Pakistan. Their yearning for learning about how data science can inform their clinical practice was simply superb!
Happy to share that we have two papers accepted at TheWebConf 2024 (formerly WWW) titled, "Analyzing Ad Exposure and Content in Child-Oriented Videos on YouTube" and "Uncovering the Hidden Data Costs of Mobile YouTube Video Ads." All the student co-authors in these papers were our fantastic LUMS undergraduate students!
Conducted the Google exploreCSR Workshop at LUMS, Feb 16-17 & 25-26 on “Navigating the Computing Research Landscape Skills and Strategies for Aspiring Female Students.” It was a delight to interact with such passionate and driven young women about computing research.
I'm chairing the TPC of ACM CoNEXT 2024 along with Gareth Tyson. Please consider submitting your work! (link to CFP)
I'm serving as the Area Chair (AC) @ The ACM Web Conference (WWW'24) - Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT track. Please consider submitting your work there!
Co-delivered a Workshop on Generative AI & Data Science for Educators. “Artificial Intelligence & Data Science Workshop for Educators,” LUMS Learning Institute. December 15-16, 2023.
Our work on the design and evaluation of a new Web framework for improving Internet Affordability has been accepted at the ACM SIGCOMM 2023! This is joint work with our fantastic students: Rumaisa, Sarah, Haseeb (Undergrads), Aimen (MS student) and my wonderful colleagues Zafar and Zartash
Our work on countering misinformation, in which we conducted a randomized control trial in Pakistan to evaluate the effectiveness of two educational interventions has been accepted at the Journal of Development Economics; a premier field journal in development economics.
Delighted to share that our work on self-supervised dataset pruning for efficient training in audio anti-spoofing has been accepted in INTERSPEECH 2023!
I recently conducted a Workshop on Data Science for Educators, “Designing and Delivering Data Science Courses at Scale,” which was organized by the LUMS Learning Institute from May 19-20, 2023.
Delighted to receive the Foundational Integrity Research Award 2022-23 from Meta for our work on countering misinformation among low digital-literacy populations. Excited to continue our work with my fantastic colleagues Dr. Ayesha Ali (Project PI, Assistant Professor of Economics at LUMS) and Dr. Agha Ali Raza (Co-PI, Assistant Professor of CS at LUMS). Here is a link to the announcement.
Happy to share that our work on the affordability of public service websites will appear in TheWebConf 2023 (formerly, WWW)
Delighted to share that our work on validated survey measures of digital literacy has been accepted at the The Journal of Engineering in Economic Development (Dev Eng). We recommend a 7-item survey module for reliably measuring digital literacy.
Happy to share that our work on digital literacy and vulnerability to misinformation among Facebook users in Pakistan has been accepted at the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media (link to the article)
Delighted to share that our work on the impact of memory pressure on mobile video QoE has been accepted at ACM CoNEXT 2022!
Delighted to share that our work on the causal impact of Android Go (a mobile operating system for entry-level smartphones) on Mobile Web performance has been accepted at ACM IMC 2022!
Delighted to share that our work on cognitive reflection and vulnerability to COVID-19 misinformation has been accepted at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review (link to the article).
Our work on detecting audio deepfakes in resource-constrained environments will appear in INTERSPEECH 2022!
Check out the presentation video of our ACM HotNets 2021 work, “Rethinking Web for Affordability and Inclusion”.
We have multiple openings for PhD students interested in ICT for Development (including mobile web/video), countering fake news, privacy-preserving machine learning, and edge computing. If you are interested, please send me an email.
Incredibly honored to receive the 2021 Sheth International Young Alumni Achievement Award. Check out the article “Bridging the Divide” in the Pitt Magazine about the award written by Susan Wiedel and my interview here.