ABOUT

My name is Ali, and I am a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Northeastern University, where I am fortunate to be advised by Alan Mislove. I am interested in concretely measuring bias and possible discriminatory behavior in modern machine learning algorithms, to help engineer better systems for the future. My current work revolves around measuring these issues in internet advertising. I am a recipient of Northeastern's Outstanding Graduate Student in Research award.

During my Ph.D., I've interned at Oracle Labs, where I worked with the Machine Learning Research Group on measuring linguistic biases in large language models. I've also interned at Intel, where I worked on generating model cards and explanations for their repository of ML models.

Before Northeastern, I got my master's degree in computer science at Saarland University. At Saarland, I was a member of Krishna Gummadi's Networked Systems group at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems.

PUBLICATIONS

MISC.

Back home in Lahore, Pakistan, I did my undergrad in computer science at FAST-NUCES. My Twitter handle is the name of the neighborhood in Lahore where I grew up. I live in Cambridge, MA with my wife, Tazeen, whose love, wisdom, and care work make graduate school easier.

The font for all headings on this homepage is inspired by Ed Ruscha W.E.B. Du Bois – who used data visualizations as a way to communicate social injustices.

Outside of work, I enjoy reading, indie video games and music. I am a student of the tabla – it's something I picked up very late in life but am currently refusing to give up. On difficult days, I like to re-read Bill Watterson's commencement speech.