
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat
DGP Lab, 5166-40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4, Canada.
Email: rifat [AT] cs [DOT] toronto [DOT] edu
[Google Scholar Citations]
[dblp]
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and a Schwartz Reisman Institute graduate fellow at the University of Toronto. I am a member of the Dynamics Graphics Project (DGP) lab and Third Space research group, where I am supervised by Dr. Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. I am advised by Dr. Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed (chair), Dr. Robert Soden, Dr. Steve Easterbrook, Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, and Dr. Kentaro Toyama on my Ph.D. dissertation committee. In addition to my CS Ph.D., I am doing a doctoral specialization in South Asian Studies from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
My research in human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative works and social computing (CSCW), and information and communication technologies for development (ICTD) is at the intersection of faith and computation. Through ethnographic, computational, and design research, I study faith-based groups and institutions to explore how religious, spiritual, and traditional ethics and politics are excluded from computing technologies. I develop theories and design socio-technical systems where plural forms of values and ethics can coexist. My ongoing research addresses online harms -- especially those that are related to faith and ideologies (such as Islamophobia) -- and ethical aspects of computing technologies. In doing so, I often draw on theories and concepts from computer science and critical social sciences.
I was born and raised in Bangladesh, a beautiful South Asian country. I speak Bengali and English. If we ever meet, please call me Rifat -- I go by my last name. When I am not reading, writing, researching, or teaching, I am running (I ran a half-marathon), visiting new places, singing or humming songs, cooking, or watching a TV serial.
Recent News
-
Feb 16, 2023: Received the Doctoral Completion Award from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto.
-
Nov 30, 2022: Showcased Compassionately, A Keyboard Interface to edit potentially hateful texts, at Applied Research in Action (ARIA) Showcase.
-
Nov 10 and 17, 2022: Presenting our paper, "Situating Public Speaking: The Politics and Poetics of the Digital Islamic Sermons in Bangladesh" at CSCW 2022.
-
Sept 10, 2022: Teaching the graduate course INF1339 (Introduction to Computational Thinking) in the Faculty of Information at UofT.
-
August 05, 2022: [Upcoming talk] Speaking in the iSchool at Syracuse University.
-
July 8, 2022: Serving as an AC at the Understanding People (Qualitative Studies) subcommittee in CHI 2023. Submit!
-
July 1, 2022: Guest edited the ACM Interactions special issue on spirituality in design. The issue is online now.
-
June 17, 2022: Attending FAccT CRAFT 2022 on Big Data and AI in Global South with the proposal paper, "Uncertainty in AI Technologies: Trust, Fairness, and Justice of AI Technology Platforms in the Global South."
-
June 06, 2022: Received the Schwartz Reisman Institute graduate fellowship!
-
March 18, 2022: Workshop proposal on big data and AI in Global South has been accepted to the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT 2022)!
-
April 30 - May 06, 2022: [Upcoming travel: CHI 2022 at New Orleans] I will present a paper, co-organize a workshop, and work as a student volunteer at CHI 2022.
What I am upto:
-
Reading Now: Ethics in the conflicts of modernity: An essay on desire, practical reasoning, and narrative (MacIntyre, A.); Rethinking Secularism (Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, & VanAntwerpen); The Myth of Religious Violence (William T. Cavanaugh). Find what books I am reading here (2020 onwards).
-
Watching: Friends (Always watching this!), Somebody Feed Phil , High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America.
