Diversity and Inclusion

Download the full Diversity Statement (PDF).

Statement

The underrepresentation of women, minorities, and people with disabilities in higher education, and particularly in computing and information sciences, is among the most consequential challenges facing the field. Diversity and equity matter to me as a teacher and researcher and also personally. I was born and raised in Bangladesh and came to the United States for graduate study, an experience that has given me a working understanding of what it takes for an academic environment to function for people from different backgrounds.

Five years at UMBC have reinforced an observation that grounds my practice: differences in background coexist with a shared interest in learning and intellectual work. The teaching and mentoring choices I make follow from that observation.

In the Classroom

I structure my classrooms so that no assumptions are made about students on the basis of gender, ethnicity, religion, or prior preparation.

Active learning that accommodates varied preparation

I use live coding sessions in which I explain program logic statement by statement, so that students can follow the procedure regardless of how much prior programming experience they bring. When teaching join operations in an introductory database design course, for example, I anchor abstract relational concepts in familiar organizational structures (a university enrollment system, a hospital records system). For students who need additional grounding, I hold extended office hours that are explicitly framed as low-pressure spaces for foundational questions, with priority for first-generation and underrepresented students.

Rotating leadership on team projects

Long-running team projects can reproduce existing hierarchies if the same students always lead. I assign rotating team leadership roles in semester-long projects so that every student, and particularly students from underrepresented groups, develops experience with project management and professional communication.

Inclusive design for online and hybrid formats

For asynchronous content I produce shorter modular videos rather than long single recordings. This allows students to revisit specific technical segments (a Data Flow Diagram walkthrough, an indexing demonstration) at their own pace. Embedded quizzes and interactive polls sustain engagement in synchronous sessions. Anonymous mid-semester surveys give me time to adjust pace, examples, and assessment formats while there is still opportunity to act on the responses.

Through Research

My research in causal AI is motivated by problems whose solutions affect human welfare and decision-making. Algorithmic bias and unreliable inference impose disproportionate costs on communities that are already underrepresented or under-resourced. A clinical decision-support system that performs poorly on physiological signals from a particular population, a sea ice forecast that is uncalibrated for the regions most affected by climate change, an intrusion-detection model that flags certain groups disproportionately, all of these are technical failures with social consequences.

Work such as TimeGraph (KDD 2025), my open-source synthetic benchmark suite, contributes infrastructure for evaluating and improving causal discovery methods before they are deployed in sensitive domains. Technical rigor is, in this sense, a form of equity. Rigorous evaluation protects everyone, and it particularly protects people who would otherwise bear the cost of methods that perform well on average and fail in specific cases.

Institutional Engagement

I am prepared to contribute to departmental and institutional initiatives that broaden participation in computing. At UMBC I have engaged with the spirit of programs such as the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) and the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, both of which are nationally recognized models for supporting underrepresented students in STEM. As a faculty member I will seek out comparable programs at my home institution, advise undergraduate research with attention to recruiting students who would not otherwise see themselves in a faculty member's lab, and support graduate mentorship structures that build community across cohorts.

What I Want to Build

I want to work in a department and a discipline that learns from people of diverse backgrounds. My objective as a faculty member is to give students of every background the conditions in which to do their work well: clarity about expectations, access to resources, structured support, and respect for the perspective each student brings. I will promote diversity and equal opportunity through teaching, research, and service.