Dr. Amira Ghenai is an Assistant Professor at the Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management at Toronto Metropolitan University and an adjunct assistant professor at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. Prior to this, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Information Studies and a member of the Accessible Computing Technologies Research Group (ACT Lab) at McGill University. She completed her PhD of Computer Science at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo. She also received a Masters of Computing Sciences in Software Engineering from the University of Imperial College London.
Dr. Ghenai’s research interests include Social Media Analysis, Data Science and Analytics, Fairness in Artificial Intelligence, Accessibility, Inclusive Design, and Human-Computer Interaction. Her work emphasizes understanding misinformation spread, especially related to health, and improving accessibility for older adults and neurodiverse populations.
She leads a funded research program on misinformation and bias, supervises graduate students on topics such as hate speech propagation, online misinformation, and neurodiversity support tools.
News and Highlights
- 2025.04.12: Our paper titled "The Impact of Listening to Music on Stress Level for Anxiety, Depression and PTSD: Mixed-Effect Models and Propensity Score Analysis" has been accepted at IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems.
- 2025.04.02: Our paper titled "Twitter-MusicPD: Melody of Minds - Navigating User-Level Data on Multiple Mental Health Disorders and Music Preferences" has been accepted at EPJ Data Science.
- 2025.03.31: Career Boost Student Zil Pavdighada was Awarded Career Boost Excellence & Boldness Award.
- 2025.01.28: Our paper titled "Exploring Hate Speech Dynamics: The Emotional, Linguistic, and Thematic Impact on Social Media Users" has been accepted at Information Processing and Management.
- 2024.01.18: Our paper titled "User-centric Modeling of Online Hate through the Lens of Psycholinguistic Patterns and Behaviors in Social Media" has been accepted at IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems.
- 2023.09.12: Our paper titled "How COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Spread on Twitter" has been accepted at The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).
- 2023.08.15: Our paper titled "Guidelines for Designing Social Networking Sites for Older Adults: A Systematic Review with Thematic Synthesis" has been accepted at ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS).
- 2022.04.11: Secured Discovery Grant from NSERC.
- 2021.06.01: Served as Accessibility Chair for the 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM).
- 2021.02.24: Our paper titled "E-Health for Older Adults: Navigating Misinformation" has been accepted to be published in the 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE).
- 2021.01.04: Started a sessional teaching position for the "Introduction to Computer Programming" course at the department of Management Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo.
- 2020: Our paper titled "Addressing Misinformation in Online Social Networks: Diverse Platforms and the Potential of Multiagent Trust Modeling" has been accepted to Information Journal - Special Issue: Tackling Misinformation Online.
- 2020.12.29: Served as the Accessibility Chair for the 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2021).
- 2020.11.20: Presented a guest lecture titled "Think aloud method for system usability analysis" in the GLIS 626 - Usability Analysis & Assessment course at McGill School of Information Studies. Lecture available here.
- 2020.11.12: Our paper titled "Addressing Misinformation in Online Social Networks: Diverse Platforms and the Potential of Multiagent Trust Modeling" has been accepted to be published in the Information journal - Special Issue: Tackling Misinformation Online.
- 2020.08.13: Presented a talk during the ACM SIGIR CHIIR Conference about "A Think-Aloud Study about Medical Misinformation in Search Results". Video available here.
- 2020.08.10: Received the prestigious AGE-WELL Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Award in Technology and Aging (Acceptance rate: 15%).
- 2019.12.15: Our paper titled "A Think-Aloud Study about Medical Misinformation in Search Results" has been accepted to be presented at the ACM SIGIR CHIIR Conference, Vancouver, Canada.
- 2019.11.01: Successfully defended PhD thesis titled "Health Misinformation in Search and Social Media".
- 2018.08.09: Our paper titled "Fake Cures: User-centric Modeling of Health Misinformation in Social Media" has been accepted to be presented in the ACM CSCW'18 conference, New York City.
- 2018.04.07: Our research about health misinformation in search engines was featured in CBC NEWS. Article available here.
- 2018.04.05: Interviewed by Global News - Edmonton about health misinformation research. Watch broadcast here.