Narges Mahyar

Narges Mahyar is an assistant professor at the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose research is situated at the intersection of human-computer interaction, information visualization, social computing, applied machine learning, human-centered artificial intelligence, and design. She applies a community-centered design approach to build novel social computing and visualization tools to empower the general public to engage in real-world sociotechnical issues, such as urban planning and climate change, by enabling them to share their ideas and comments for shaping future policies.

At Radcliffe, she is investigating innovative techniques to integrate situated visualization, augmented reality, and civic technology to design and build a mobile platform that simulates the localized impact of climate change, thereby providing Boston residents with an immersive experience of climate change visualizations and empowering them to contribute comments and ideas on climate change issues. The platform will benefit the movement towards more equitable resilience by creating new opportunities for the public, especially the underserved communities, to raise their voices and join the discourse.

Her recognition in the field has been repeatedly confirmed through many accolades for her research, including seven best or honorable mention paper awards from top conferences in her field. She holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Victoria. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Computer Science department at the University of British Columbia from 2014 to 2016 and in the Design Lab at the UC San Diego from 2016 to 2018.