Sarah Shah

Throughout her academic and research careers, Sarah has had the opportunity to explore different sides of computing, as a researcher, an instructor, and a project manager. She has worked on projects that bring together big data, machine learning, and performance analytics, developing predictive models to facilitate reliable and scalable systems. Her work finds applications in time-critical automated systems such as online fraud detection softwares, emergency response systems, and self-driving vehicles. She looks forward to utilizing her research and data expertise to resolve and manage ongoing global issues, similar to her work during the COVID-19 pandemic on monitoring symptoms locally,  predicting outbreaks, and extracting public grievances through social media platforms to aid efficient crises management.

Sarah completed both her MSc and PhD in Software Engineering at University of Calgary. Her masters research focused on estimating response times and detecting anomalies in a timely manner in Big Data applications, whereas her doctoral research focused on understanding and consequently modeling the performance of Deep Neural Network inference, with the goal of making these systems faster and more efficient. Along the way, she has taught courses on big data systems, scalable data analytics, machine learning, software performance, project management, and data engineering — areas she is eager to continue growing with her students.

Sarah is excited to be at MRU, where she looks forward to creating an engaging classroom experience and supporting students as they transform technical knowledge into applicable skills and consequently contribute to evolving real-world applications. Her current research interests lie in emerging performance,  environmental, and privacy issues arising with large-scale AI applications, as well as utilizing these technologies for education, as well as social services and protection. 

Education:

BSc in Electrical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)

MSc in Software Engineering, University of Calgary

PhD in Software Engineering, University of Calgary