[ Research Interests: Causal inference, spatial data science, groundwater water resources]
[ Doctoral Research: Groundwater level dynamics and agricultural land use change: Econometric Issues and Strategies]
>Groundwater monitoring network, Indo-Gangetic Basic. Source: CGWB<
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Affiliation
Affiliation
I am currently Lead, Research and Technology at PROTO and Senior Data Scientist (Consultant) at the Econometrics Lab, IIIT Delhi, New Delhi, India. I received a PhD in applied econometrics from IIITD in early 2024 in which I worked on causal inference and econometric strategies for groundwater resource management. I work at the intersection of applied econometrics, data science and computer science.
Job Market
I am open to full-time positions at the intersection of applied econometrics and data science. I am looking to develop a program/lab that uses econometric modeling, machine learning, GIS and remote sensing for sustainable development and evidence-based policy making.
Job market materials:
Job Market Paper (available on request)
Download all job market material. References are available on request. Feel free to write to me at mail.saifali@gmail.com or saifa@iiitd.ac.in
Summary
Summary
I am committed to teaching, research, program development and institution building for interdisciplinary work in computing and social science. This commitment serves the larger goal of empowering students and the public to correctly situate and apply new technologies in their lives and work. I believe that evidence-based policy making combined with ethical and critical studies is a powerful framework for tackling new world problems.
Latest News
Latest News
Water Sustainability National Hackathon, IIT Jodhpur, 22 March 2026
Photo: From the event website
Student Award
Student Award
My student Aatika Kamal (Jamia Hamdard) has won second prize at National Hackathon for Water Sustainability & Desalination For Arid & Semi-Arid Regions, organised by IIT Jodhpur on the occasion of World Water Day 2026. We pitched an NLP-assisted RAG pipeline for semantic search of groundwater policy documents and publication meant for researchers and policymakers.
Remote flight monitoring station, AKGEC Drone Academy, Ghaziabad.
Photo: by the author
Drone Flight Certification
Drone Flight Certification
Completed a 4-day remote pilot licensing course conducted by the AKGEC Drone Academy in Ghaziabad. The course covered the basics of aerodynamics, drone flight protocol and safety procedures and 4 hours of flying time including night-time flying. I am set to receive a DGCA license to fly small drones (up to 25 kgs). UAVs present fascinating possibilities for research, commerce and daily life, if used correctly.
The award winning team at the Research Innovation and Incubation ShowcasE (RIISE 2025) held at IIIT Delhi.
Photo: Shared by Mohammad Owais
Student Research Award
Student Research Award
Thrilled to announce that my students, Mohammad Owais, Ariba Siddiqui, Ayan Alam, Saad Ahmed Siddiqui (and Saif Ali, supervisor) from Jamia Millia Islamia, have achieved a remarkable double recognition for their work “SurveiLens: Natural Language-Based Moment Retrieval for Surveillance Video Analysis.”
The team won an award at the Research Innovation and Incubation ShowcasE (RIISE 2025) held at IIIT Delhi and had their full paper accepted for presentation and publication at IEEE DELCON 2025 held at Jamia Millia Islamia. Their project introduces an AI-powered framework that enables investigators to query long-duration CCTV footage through natural-language descriptions, drastically reducing manual review time. By combining advanced vision-language models such as CLIP and BLIP with optimized frame-sampling strategies, SurveiLens represents a major step toward intelligent, efficient, and justice-oriented video analysis
Tweeted traffic alerts due to waterlogging. Strong spatial clustering in low lying areas, near major waterways and drains.
Source: Shahzad, Z., Arshad, R., Ali, S., Causal Analysis and Mapping of Urban Traffic Congestion using Geosocial Analytics, IEEE DELCON 2025, International Conference on Recent Smart Technologies in Engineering for Sustainable Development, Special Session: Digital Humanities: Tools and Applications for a Sustainable Future, New Delhi, 2025
Urban Traffic Congestion in Delhi NCR: a Geosocial Analytics Approach
Urban Traffic Congestion in Delhi NCR: a Geosocial Analytics Approach
Stuck in a traffic jam for 6 minutes and 47 seconds? 🚗🚦
Listen to a NotebookLM podcast of our latest research paper (to appear on IEEE Xplore) on mapping traffic congestion in Delhi NCR using NLP and Twitter 🛜 data. The video summary is kind of over the top, and it makes some false claims, but as a marketing video for our research, it gets the point across. The point being that tweets can be analysed using machine learning techniques to generate a partial reconstruction of the causes and patterns of congestion. We find that the number 1 reported cause of congestion are bus breakdowns 🚌 and number 2 is waterlogging. We also find that different parts of Delhi NCR experience traffic congestion for different reasons. The map on the left shows tweeted traffic alerts due to waterlogging. They tend to be clustered in low-lying areas around the Delhi Ridge region, where runoff from rainfall 🌧️will most tend to collect. There is a strong spatial correlation with rivers, waterways and the drainage network.
Cross-validation of spatially predicted groundwater levels in Western Uttar Pradesh.
Source: Ali, Saif, and Gaurav Arora. "Spatial Auto-correlation in Groundwater Levels." (2022).
NPTEL Course: Spatial Statistics and Spatial Econometrics
NPTEL Course: Spatial Statistics and Spatial Econometrics
I assisted Dr. Gaurav Arora (IIITD) with an exciting new NPTEL course titled "Spatial Statistics and Spatial Econometrics." Check it out on NPTEL.
In the course, I teach spatial statistics and spatial econometrics using R and ArcGIS.
The code, data and slides are available on GitHub. The materials are provided "as-is" with no liability to the author for correctness or unintended outcomes.
About NPTEL
The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning, is a joint venture of the IITs and IISc, funded by the Ministry of Education (MoE) Government of India, and was launched in 2003. It started as a project to take quality education to all corners of the country. NPTEL offers 600+ courses in about 22 disciplines. It is the largest online repository in the world of courses in engineering, basic sciences and selected humanities and management subjects.
About Me
About Me
Computer Scientist and Applied Economist
Computer Scientist and Applied Economist
Department of Social Science and Humanities, IIITD, New Delhi, India
Research Interests
Research Interests
Groundwater resource economics and management, applied econometrics, spatial statistics, missing data
Interdisciplinary Interests
Interdisciplinary Interests
Computational social science and empirical economics, data science and visualization, economics and ethics
Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Contact
Email: mail.saifali@gmail.com
Phone: 011-26907415 (Office)
Mail: B-213, R&D Block, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Okhla Industrial Estate, Phase III, Near Govind Puri Metro Station, Shyam Nagar, Okhla Industrial Area, New Delhi, Delhi 110020
Directions: Arriving from Okhla/Modi Mill turn left onto Ma Anandmayee Marg from the outer ring road. Go into the service lane and turn left under the metro station. Go straight and follow the curve to the left. Once you see a black board that says "IIITD" turn right and you will arrive at the main gate #1.
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/nPtBEqC21z98XwtS9
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