Rifat Ara Shams

Rifat Ara Shams is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO's Data61. She is working on "Diversity and Inclusion in Artificial Intelligence" and "Requirements Engineering for Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RE4RAI)". She completed her Ph.D. from the Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity (OVIS Lab) and the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in 2022. Her Ph.D. work focused on "Operationalizing Human Values in Mobile Applications" under the supervision of Professor Jon Whittle, Associate Professor Gillian Oliver, Dr. Mojtaba Shahin, and Dr. Waqar Hussain. Her research interests are Diversity and Inclusion in AI, Software Engineering for Responsible AI, Human Values in Software Engineering, Values and Ethics in AI.

Her research achievements started in 2016 with an international research award, “Young Scientist” for her contributions to Computer Science research. Following this trend, she received many awards for her academic performance, research, and leadership skills. She is awarded the prestigious "Women in Technology 2021" award from Zonta Club of Melbourne and Lockheed Martin. She is also the Ambassador of STEM Sisters. She is the runner-up of Monash FIT 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) 2021 and also the runner-up of Monash FIT 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) 2020. She is a Gold Medalist and a recipient of the "Prime Minister Award" in Bangladesh.

Since her Ph.D. journey started back in 2018, she has been working on several journal (TSE, JSS, IST, AI and Ethics, IEEE Access etc.) and conference papers (ICSE, ESEC/FSE, RE, HICSS, ESEM, RE etc.) on the area of "Human Values in Software Engineering" and "Diversity and Inclusion in AI". Her two papers have been awarded the prestigious badges "Reusable" and "Available" for the artifacts in ICSE 2020.

Besides her own research works, she worked as an Organizing Committee member in ICSSP 2023 and Program Committee member in several conferences including ICSE 2023, RE'22, ICSEA 2021, MSR 2021 and ACM COMPASS 2021. She also worked as a reviewer in the Journal of Systems and Software 2022, Information and Software Technology (IST) Journal 2023, IEEE Software: Special Issues on Digital Twins, 2021, Journal of Computer, and the workshop on HCSE&CS, co-hosted by ASE 2021.

Besides these research works, she is also involved in voluntary activities. She is the volunteer of Education and Outreach Actvities at CSIRO. She was the Organizer of the Monash Software Research Students (MSRS) Meetups where the target audiences are the early career researchers (Monash University Faculty of IT staff, PhD, MPhil and Masters students). She also worked as a student volunteer in ICSE 2021, RE'21, and ASE 2021. She is also a tech-blog writer.

She has been also playing a leadership role in various activities. For example, she is the admin of Software Engineering Researchers Australasia (SERA) - PhD Community, an active member of Australian Software Engineering Researchers (OZSER), Anita Borg Community- Women in STEM, Australian Academy of Science- STEM Women, STEM Women Asia, Monash Software Force (MSF), and Monash Graduate Association (MGA) Women’s Community.

To know more about Rifat and her works, explore the website! 

Email: rifat.shams@csiro.au, swarna601@gmail.com