Iqra Ali
PhD Candidate at QMUL | MEXT Scholar | Recipient Google Travel Grant | NLP & LLM Researcher
Queen Marry University of London
About Me
I am Iqra Ali, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Human-Centred Computing at Queen Mary University of London, fully funded by the EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (01-05-2024 - 31-03-2028). I am honored to be working with Prof. Maria Liaqata as my primary supervisor, with Prof. Matthew Purver as my Co-Supervisor, whose guidance has been invaluable.
I completed my Master’s degree in the Natural Language Processing Lab at NAIST, Japan, under the supervision of Prof. Taro Watanabe, with Hidetaka Kamigaito as my Co-Supervisor. I graduated with a GPA of 3.7/4, funded by the MEXT Scholarship from the Japanese Government.
Currently, I am collaborating with Prof. Ravi Shekhar from the University of Essex on the Text Simplification Task. In 2023, I undertook a research internship at Fujitsu AI Lab, focusing on Multimodality and Large Language Models for Behavior Analysis, under the mentorship of Prof. Tomoya Iwakura and Tatsuya Hiraoka. Prior to this, I worked as an AI intern at Fusic Japan, where I analyzed Sentimental and Behavioral Patterns in Suicidal Ideation using Multimodal AI techniques, under the guidance of Shintaro Muroi.
Key Achievements
📚 PhD Candidate: I am Full time PhD student at the Centre for Human-Centred Computing at Queen Mary University of London, fully funded by the EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (01-05-2024 - 31-03-2028).
🏆 Recipient Google Conference Scholarship: Authored the paper "Monolingual Paraphrase Detection Corpus for Low-Resource Pashto Language at Sentence Level", presented at LREC-COLING-2024. I received the Google Conference Scholarship for this achievement from GOOGLE.
🏆 Recipient of Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship: Thrilled to share that I have officially graduated with a Master’s in Engineering from NAIST, Japan, under the fully funded Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship. I’m proud to be a part of the MEXT Scholars Association.
💼 Industry Experience: Interned at Fujitsu AI Research Lab and Fusic Inc., Japan, working on innovative AI applications. Additionally, I worked as a Business Analyst at CureMD Healthcare IT in New York, improving customer satisfaction and processing efficiency.
🤝Collaborations: Had the honor of collaborating with Professor Ravi Shekhar from the University of Essex and other leading researchers, broadening the scope of my work.
🔎 Academic Service: Experience in reviewing journals for AI, NLP, and Security fields in AI Communication.
EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for PhD from Queen Mary University of London (UK 2025 - 2029)
Recipient of Google Conference Scholarships (APAC) (April. 2024)
MEXT Fully Funded Scholarship for Masters in Engineering from Nara Institute of Science and Technology (JAPAN 2022 - 2024)
HEC Fully Funded Scholarship (Pakistan 2017- 2021)
PGC Fully Funded Scholarship (Pakistan 2015 - 2017)
AI Learning Club
Worked on the project of uplifting awareness of “Trends in AI” among students, teaching them basic AI algorithms and presentation skills.
Literature Society
As an active member of the Literature Society, I've embraced a shared passion for literature, fostering discussions, and expanding literary horizons.
English [IELTS (8 overall) (2024) (L: 8.5, R: 9, W: 7, S: 7)] | [Duo-lingo: 105]
Urdu (Native) | Pashto (Native) | Punjabi (Native)
Hindi (Intermediate Level) | Bangla (Intermediate Level)
Japanese (Entry)
Traveling | Hiking | Adventures| Novel Reading