Prof Didar Zowghi

Professor Didar Zowghi is Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO's Data61 (the data and digital specialist arm of Australia's national science agency). She leads the science team in: "Diversity and Inclusion in Artificial Intelligence" and "Requirements Engineering for Responsible AI".

In 2022, She was awarded Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Conjoint Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

During her tenure of 22 years at UTS, she held many leadership positions: Deputy Dean of Graduate Research School, Director of research Centre for Human-Centred Technology Design, Director of Women in Engineering and Information Technology, Department Head of Software Engineering, and Associate Dean/Research. Before joining academia, she worked in software industry in the UK and Australia as software engineer, analyst, consultant, and project manager.

In 2022, she pioneered a new research at CSIRI's Data61, focusing on: 1) exploring the challenges and opportunities of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) in achieving Responsible AI, by developing guidelines for operationalising D&I in the design, development and deployment of AI; 2) adapting requirements engineering knowledge and practices for achieving D&I in AI.

Her 20+ years of academic research was focused on improving the software development processes and its products. In particular, her research addressed issues in the communication-rich, multidisciplinary activities of software development, referred to as Requirements Engineering. She is an expert in the "Evidenced Based" and “Human-Centred Design” research. She has supervised many research students in Sydney and internationally. Much of her research was funded by the Australian Research Council.

She has served on the program committee of many conferences including IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering. She was its General Chair in 2010, Program Chair in 2015 and Steering Committee Chair (2016-18). She received Lifetime Service Award in 2019 by the IEEE for her leadership in the Requirements Engineering research community. She is Associate Editor of IEEE Software and Requirements Engineering Journal. In 2022, she received the prestigious IEEE Computer Society TCSE Distinguished Educator award.

She has published over 230 research articles in prestigious conferences and journals and co-authored papers with over 140 scholars from 40+ countries. She has delivered numerous keynotes, invited talks, industry seminars and many panel discussions in Software Engineering and Responsible AI.