Awards

Creating an equitable, engaging and supportive learning environment for FIT2014 students by developing initiatives such as post-lecture interviews with prominent figures in the field during lockdowns (with 32% of interview subjects being women). Also embedding notes on computer science history throughout the unit that highlight the impact of key people who were from underrepresented groups and running mentoring to build the confidence of new tutors.

As a PhD candidate, sessional lecturer and post-doctoral research, helping to recruit and retain international women students and actively growing a culture of respect and inclusion in the faculty. Fariha was the 2020 and 2021 Monash IT Student Representative and HDR Women Network Representative where she built a platform that creates a voice for HDR women in the faculty. Among many achievements, she was also awarded the prestigious 2021 IEEE Women in Services Computing Scholarship, interviewed by ZDNET on her research in explainable AI and received a grant to work on health record management with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Initiating and organising the annual Women’s Promotion Peer-to-Peer Support Networking Event at Monash University open to women of all levels within the STEMM faculties of IT, Engineering, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Science and Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

The event focuses the preparation and applications of women for promotion and provides a structured opportunity for mentees to seek guidance from mentors about the process as well as personal advice pertaining to their situation.

Working with the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFHH) to create Action Grants that supports first-time applicants to the $3.7M Multicultural Communications Outreach Program —which helps multicultural communities produce and distribute content promoting COVID-19 vaccinations and COVIDSafe behaviour. Since its launch, Action Grants has received further funding from the DFFH to run more rounds and another $50K from Fairer Victoria to scale the initiative across three more programs. The next Action Grants supported DFFH grant is The Pride Events and Festivals Fund which provides grants of up to $10,000 for LGBTIQA+ events in Victoria.

Developing new approaches to detect and remove gender bias within software engineering job advertisements through a natural language processing-based automated tool that can be used by hiring managers, recruitment companies and other organisations to assess ads for gender bias. Also establishing a framework inspired by ‘GenderMag’ that uses an evidence-based approach for detecting bias in problem-solving software interfaces and developing male and female personas to help design gender-inclusive ads.