I'm broadly interested in researching networked systems and their societal impacts. My current research centers on digital development, countering misinformation, cloud/edge computing and the interplay between technology and public policy.
Research: Cognitive Reflection & Misinformation - [07/22]
Interview: Bridging the Digital Divide - [10/21]
Research: Rethinking Web for Affordability & Inclusion - [06/23]
What ChatGPT means for Higher Education - [03/23]
November, 2022 [Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 2022]
Digital literacy is a measure of how effectively individuals can navigate digital spaces and contextually understand the information they come across. Using a field sample of 674 Facebook users in Pakistan, we study the correlates of digital literacy and its association with the ability to discern between true and fake information. You can read the full paper here. [JQD, 2022]
September, 2022 [ACM CoNEXT, 2022]
Despite the popularity of entry-level smartphones in developing countries, little is known about how mobile video performs over such devices. We conducted the first empirical evaluation of mobile video performance under memory pressure. Our user study measures how frequently smartphones encounter memory pressure. We explore various strategies for reducing the impact of memory pressure.
September, 2022 [ACM IMC, 2022]
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, 2022]
The uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has been 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
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.
We propose a radically new approach for rethinking Web design for affordability and inclusion. For more details, look out for the camera-ready! (Work to appear at ACM HotNets 2021)
Happy to share that our work on audio deepfake detection using attention deep neural networks has been accepted at ASRU 2021!
Our work on detecting audio deepfakes using acoustic microfeatures will appear in INTERSPEECH 2021!
Our work on mobile Web browsing under memory pressure has been accepted to appear in ACM SIGCOMM CCR, October 2020
Delighted to receive the Facebook Research Award 2020 for our work on countering deepfake misinformation among low digital-literacy populations. Looking forward to working with Dr. Ayesha Ali (Project PI, Assistant Professor of Economics at LUMS) and Dr. Agha Ali Raza (Co-PI, Assistant Professor of CS at LUMS)