samiai Hi! I am Samia Ibtasam (maiden name: Samia Razaq). I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. I am advised by Richard Anderson. I work at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD), and Human-Centered Design (HCD).

Currently, I am part of the ICTD Lab at UW and working as a Student Researcher at Google Research where I am working on the CATS4ML (Crowdsourcing Adverse Test Sets to Help Surface AI Blindspots) Project.

My PhD work focuses on devising tools and frameworks to increase technological and financial inclusion. With more than ten years of experience in designing, developing, and deploying technologies for emerging markets, I am studying how users know, understand, and use technological and financial services and how can we use consumer training to expand technological and financial inclusion. 

Before joining UW, I worked as a faculty member at the Information Technology University in Lahore, Pakistan where I taught Design Thinking, Human-Centered Design, Design for Development, and Technology for Global Development courses to undergraduate and graduate Computer Science students.

While at ITU, I also worked as the founding Co-Director of Innovations for Poverty Alleviation Lab (IPAL). At IPAL, I worked to design solutions for Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health (MNCH) including information systems, diagnosis applications, etc. I also worked with the Government of Punjab, Pakistan to redesign the Immunization card and creating digital health records for the province of Punjab.

I have been working in the research on the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) since 2010. I started my work with speech interfaces for low-literate users. I worked with Umar Saif, Roni Rosenfeld, and his student Agha Ali Raza at CMU.

I received the American Association for University Women (AAUW) International Fellowship and Society of Women Engineers Scholarship. I was also named a Google Women Techmaker (North America) Scholar in 2019, a Marilyn Fries Endowed Fellow in 2016, and the Acumen Fund Regional Fellow for Pakistan in 2015.  I occasionally tweet @SamiaRazaq.

[Header Image: Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, WA | Image by Samia Ibtasam]