Safinah Ali, a PhD student in the Personal Robots group, is among the recipients of the Microsoft PhD Fellowship for 2022.

Her research is about human-AI co-creation and she investigates how to utilize embodied AI agents, specifically robotic agents, to support children’s creativity. She has developed child-robot collaborative games that afford co-creation by utilizing generative models. She also engages in AI literacy efforts for k-12 students, with a special focus on creative machine learning and ethics in AI. She has actively worked on initiatives that aim to make AI literacy resources accessible to students from underrepresented groups in STEM, specifically girls and BIPOC youth. 

This two-year fellowship "has supported hundreds of fellows over the last two decades, many of whom have gone on to work within the Microsoft Research organization. Others have gone on to perform pioneering research elsewhere within the technology industry or accept faculty appointments at leading universities."