Hi!
I am a 4th year Computer Science PhD Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst). My research interest lies in the intersections of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). I work in the HCI-VIS Lab under the supervision of Dr. Narges Mahyar and Dr. Ali Sarvghad. My research primarily focuses on designing and developing conversational agents to elicit rich input.
Read more about my work
With the growing popularity of AI-powered chatbots, new methods for data collection have emerged, where a chatbot converses with a human user to gather data. In this application domain, chatbots have demonstrated the potential to address the limitations of online surveys by reducing survey fatigue, increasing engagement, and enriching response quality. However, creating chatbots that can sustain conversations across multiple topics, determining which aspects of the conversational interface affect user experience, and effectively using conversational agents for long-term data collection presents significant technical and design challenges. My research aims to address these issues, focusing on improving functionality and investigating aspects of conversational agents' interfaces for data collection.
Before UMass, I worked as a Machine Learning Engineer at TigerIT Bangladesh Ltd, working on Conversational AI and Machine Translation. I have a strong passion for problem-solving and software development alongside my research interests. During my undergraduate studies, I actively participated in competitive programming and was fortunate enough to win multiple hackathons.
Selected Talks Recordings
DIS 2024 Presentation
Presentation of our DIS 2024 paper, "Beyond Text and Speech in Conversational Agents: Mapping the Design Space of Avatars."
CSCW 2023 Presentation
Presentation of our CSCW 2023 paper, "CommunityBots: Creating and Evaluating A Multi-Agent Chatbot Platform for Public Input Elicitation."
Recent News
- June 2024: I am excited to start my summer internship as a Data Science for Common Good (DS4CG) Fellow with Media Cloud.
- May 2024: I completed my MSc in Computer Science from UMass Amherst.
- May 2024: I passed my PhD candidacy. I’m officially a PhD candidate now.
- May 2024: Our work on categorizing the avatar design space was accepted to DIS 2024.
- Oct 2023: I am excited to be a reviewer for ACM CHI 2024.
Older news
- Oct 2023: Awarded Dr. Dave Lomet Graduate Scholarship for Systems Research.
- Nov 2022: Our CommunityBots paper was accepted to CSCW 2023.
- Aug 2022: I am excited to serve as the Web Chair for IEEE VIS 2023-2024.
- June 2022: Awarded Jim Gray Scholarship for Systems Research.
- Sep 2021: Started my Ms/PhD at UMass Amherst.
Publications (* = equal contribution)
[2024] Mashrur Rashik, Mahmood Jasim, Kostiantyn Kucher, Ali Sarvghad, Narges Mahyar. “Beyond Text and Speech in Conversational Agents: Mapping the Design Space of Avatars”, ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 20 pages, 2024.
[2023] Zhiqiu Jiang* , Mashrur Rashik* , Kunjal Panchal, Mahmood Jasim, Ali Sarvghad, Pari Riahi, Erica DeWitt, Fey Thurber, Narges Mahyar. “CommunityBots: Creating and Evaluating A Multi-Agent Chatbot Platform for Public Input Elicitation”. ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 32 pages, 2023.
[2022] Erica Dewitt, Zhiqiu Jiang, Mashrur Rashik, Kunjal Panchal, Mahmood Jasim, Fey Thurber, Cami Quinteros, Ali Sarvghad, Narges Mahyar, Pari Riahi. “Mapping Instability: The Effects of the Pandemic on the Civic Life of a Small Town”. Environments By Design: Health, Wellbeing, and Place Conference AMPS proceeding Series, 10 pages, 2022.
[2020] Mashrur Rashik, Md. Musfiqur Rahman, Md. Mamun-or-Rashid, Md. Mosaddek Khan, Long Tran- Thanh, Nicholas R. Jennings. “Speeding Up Distributed Pseudo-tree Optimization Procedure with Cross Edge Consistency to Solve DCOPs”. Applied Intelligence, Springer Nature, October 10, 2020.
Honors and Awards
- 2023: Awarded Dr. Dave Lomet Graduate Scholarship for Systems Research
- 2022: Awarded Jim Gray Scholarship for Systems Research
- 2019: Awarded Merit Based Scholarship based on exceptional undergraduate result
- 2019: Champion, Code Samurai Inter-University Hackathon
- 2019: Awarded Bangabandhu Innovation Grant - 1 million BDT (11,000 USD)
- 2019: Winners, Student to Startup, Chapter 2
- 2018: 1st Runner Up, DUITS IT Festival
- 2017: 21st Position, ACM-ICPC Asia Dhaka Regional Contest
- 2017: 5th Position, City University Inter University Programming Contest