I’m Sahara Ali!
I am a Data Science PhD candidate in the Department of Information Systems (IS) at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a graduate researcher at NSF HDR Institute for Harnessing Data and Model Revolution in the Polar Regions (iHARP). I was born in Karachi, Pakistan and came to the United States in 2020 to pursue higher education after getting a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. Currently, I am leading one of iHARP’s interdisciplinary research teams working on the identification and quantification of causes of sea-ice and ice-sheet melt in the Arctic, with the aid of deep learning based causal inference models and domain science experts.
Just like the field that is ever-growing and ever-evolving, I would recommend anyone taking this career path to focus on developing transdisciplinary skills that can contribute in more than one field of science.
My pursuit of finding data-driven solutions to complex polar science problems led me to work with researchers in NASA, NOAA and multiple academic institutions including University of Colorado, Boulder and University of Alaska, Fairbanks. In the past 5 years, I have mentored enthusiastic young high school and college researchers who developed novel data science methods to forecast Arctic sea ice and were able to publish their findings in reputable conferences, such as IEEE BigData and IEEE ICMLA.
My mom (a high-school English teacher) is my biggest admirer and so is my husband.
My eagerness to work on ideas with social impact, along with technologies that open doors for innovation and inter-disciplinary research, is what keeps me going.
Besides being a full-time researcher, I spend time in recreational activities like hiking and social retreats. I am an advocate for graduate student wellbeing and success, and have served as student advisor and founding members for two prominent committees at UMBC, i.e. Graduate Student Success Committee and UMBC's Faculty Committee on Graduate Student Mentoring (MORE).
When I am not working, I am out with my husband exploring nature or trying out a new local eatery. I have a BIG sweet-tooth and I enjoy experimenting with baking (breads, cakes and cookies) as much as I enjoy working in the research lab.
I am an advocate for graduate student wellbeing and success.
During my first year of PhD, somewhere in late 2021, I stumbled upon a dataset from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), where my goal was to learn climate informatics for a course project. Little did I know that one encounter would lead me to becoming a polar explorer conducting her entire PhD research on Arctic amplification, a concept still new for many peers in my lab.
My mom (a high-school English teacher) is my biggest admirer and so is my husband. My husband feels proud that I am contributing to the Science focused on the global climate, while there are still so many people in the world ignorant to the impact of climate change.
Though much of my current research is focused on the application of Data Science for Polar Science, I envision to further my interdisciplinary research in other areas of Earth Science. More specifically, I am interested in projects that will harness the collective knowledge of diverse disciplines (Glaciology, Atmospheric Physics, Data Science, and Earth Science) and address pressing societal challenges faced by communities in the polar regions.
My eagerness to work on ideas with social impact, along with technologies that open doors for innovation and inter-disciplinary research, is what keeps me going.
My biggest inspiration comes from Science itself. Just like the field, that is ever-growing and ever-evolving, I would recommend anyone taking this career path to focus on developing transdisciplinary skills that can contribute in more than one field of science, so that you are not confined to one discipline and your expertise grows with the evolution of Science.
Follow Sahara on X / Twitter @SimpleSahara to learn more!