Effat Farhana

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Auburn University. I completed my Ph.D. under Dr. Collin F. Lynch at North Carolina State University and my B.S. from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Before joining Auburn, I was a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, working with Dr. Maithilee Kunda .

My research focuses on mining educational software (e.g., MOOCs, online learning platforms) to derive data-driven heuristics and designing interpretable machine learning algorithms. Towards interpretable machine learning, my research has focused on designing a cognitive theory-grounded system for personalized learning in education (EAAI 2022). Another work focused on designing a rule-mining classification algorithm--to find the right balance between interpretability and performance (GECCO 2017, GECCO 2018). Towards data-driven analytics, I focus on discovering insight by exploiting data from educational software, such as understanding students' interactions within the system and connecting those with their academic performance (ACM L@S 2020, EDM 2020).

I am also broadly interested in empirical software engineering research (ICSE 2020, EMSE 2020, ICSME 2019).

Awards and Honors

  • Rising Star in Data Science-Jan 2021, University of Chicago, 2021
  • Travel award for Women in Machine Learning (WiML) at NeurIPS, 2020 (virtual).
  • Travel award for CRA-WP Early and Mid Career Mentoring Workshop, 2020.
  • Tapia Diversity in Computing Conference, 2020 scholarship for ACM Student Research Competition (Poster).
  • Women in Computer Science (WiCS), NCSU scholarship for Grace Hopper Conference, 2018.

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