Faculty Members

Education

• PhD (CS), ITU, Lahore, 2021
• MPhil (CS), University of Punjab, Lahore 2016
• BS (CS), University of the Punjab, Lahore, 2014

Profile

Research Interests:

Ms. Iqra Safder's research interests lie in the applications of AI and Machine Learning for the development of customized information retrieval systems and text classification tasks, as well as in designing algorithms for text analytics using scholarly big data and social media unstructured datasets. Over time she has built her interests in the use of AI for mining altmetrics especially Twitter data to perform social media analytics. Additionally, Iqra is also interested in contextual scientometrics to support and design advanced research indicators using altmetric and bibliometric data sources.

Biography:

Ms. Iqra Safder earned her PhD degree from ITU, Lahore in 2021. Prior to that she received her BS Software Engineering and MS Computer Science degree, both from Punjab University College of Information Technology (PUCIT), Lahore, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Her research interests are in the area of Text Mining and Information Retrieval using semi-structured and unstructured data sources, with several international peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings at her credit. She was awarded a fully-funded Ph.D. fellowship at ITU in 2016. Ms. Iqra served as faculty member in ITU, Lahore for 1 year. She also served as Visiting Lecturer at PUCIT, Lahore as well. In 2019, Ms. Iqra received a research fellowship scholarship (IRSIP) for a research visit at the University of Melbourne, Australia, by HEC Pakistan. During her Ph.D. studies, she has received a couple of student travel awards such as the PHEC travel award 2017, ICDM student travel award 2018 and, MDPI Publications young student travel grant 2018. She has published her research findings in internationally recognized conferences including ICADL [core rank: A, acceptance ratio: 17.7%], WWW Cognitive Computing track [acceptance ratio 15%], ICDMW, STI, and Scopus indexed peer-review journals (e.g. Scientometrics, Information Processing & Management, Journal of Information Science, and Library Hi-Tech). Concomitantly, she has attended several international conferences (ICADL, ICDM) and presented her research work. Iqra is also a reviewer of the Springer Scientometrics journal.

Journal Papers:

1. Iqra Safder, I., Batool, H., Sarwar, R., Zaman, F., Aljohani, N. R., Nawaz, R., ... & Hassan, S. U. Parsing AUC result-figures in machine learning specific scholarly documents for semantically-enriched summarization. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 2021 (IF = 2.30 Scopus Index )

2. Iqra Safder, Mahmood, Z., Sarwar, R., Hassan, S.U., Zaman, F., Nawab, R.M.A., Bukhari, F., Abbasi, R.A., Alelyani, S., Aljohani, N.R. and Nawaz, R.,, “ Sentiment analysis for Urdu online reviews using deep learning models” Expert Systems, 2021. (IF = 2.58).

3. Hassan, S.U., Aljohani, N.R., Tarar, U.I., Iqra Safder, Sarwar, R., Alelyani, S. and Nawaz, R., “Exploiting Tweet Sentiments in Altmetrics Large-Scale Data”. Journal of Information Science. SAGE, 2021 (IF = 3.28)

4. Iqra Safder, S Hassan, Anna Visvizi, Thanapon Noraset, Suppawong Tuarob, Raheel Nawaz, “Deep Learning-based Extraction of Algorithmic Metadata in Full-Text Scholarly Documents”, Information Processing and Management, 2020. (IF = 6.22)

5. Mahmood, Z., Iqra Safder , Nawab, R. M. A., Bukhari, F., Nawaz, R., Alfakeeh, A. S., ... Hassan, S. U. “Deep sentiments in Roman Urdu text using Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network model”. Information Processing & Management, 57(4), 102233. 2020 (IF = 6.22)

6. Drongstrup, D., Malik, S., Aljohani, N. R., Alelyani, S., Iqra Safder , Hassan, S. U. “Can social media usage of scientific literature predict journal indices of AJG, SNIP and JCR? An altmetric study of economics”. Scientometrics, 1-18. 2020. (IF = 3.230).

7. Hassan, S. U., Saleem, A., Soroya, S. H., Iqra Safder, Iqbal, S., Jamil, S., ... Nawaz, R. “Sentiment analysis of tweets through Altmetrics: A machine learning approach.” Journal of Information Science. SAGE, 2020 (IF = 3.28)

8. Iqra Safder, S Hassan, “A Novel Deep Learning-based Feature Engineering Approach for Algorithm Searching from Full-text Scientific Literature: Leaping forward to Bibliometric- enhanced Information Retrieval”, Scientometrics, 2019. (IF = 3.23).

9. N Arshad, A Bakar, S. H. Soroya, Iqra Safder, S Haider, S Hassan,... R Nawaz, “Extracting scientific trends by mining topics from Call for Papers”. Library Hi Tech. 2019 (IF = 1.256)

10. S Hassan, Iqra Safder, M Akram, F Kamran. “A Novel Machine-Learning Approach to Measuring Scientific Knowledge Flows Using Citation Context Analysis”, Scientometrics, in press; Springer, 2018 (IF = 3.230)

Conference Papers

1. Iqra Safder, S Hassan, N. R Aljohani, “AI cognition to Search for Relevant Knowledge from Scholarly Big Data using Multilayer Perceptron and RCNN Model”, The World Wide Web (WWW) in Cognitive Computing Track, Lyon, France, 2018. (Core Rank A*, Acceptance ratio: 15%)

2. Iqra Safder, S Hassan “DS4A: Deep Search System for Algorithms from Full-text Scholarly Big Data”, International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW), Singapore, 2018.

3. M Imran, A Akhtar, A Said, Iqra Safder, S Hassan, N. R Aljohani, “Exploiting Social Networks of Twitter in Altmetrics Big Data”, 23rd International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (STI), Leiden, The Netherlands, 2018.

4. Iqra Safer, J Sarfraz, S Hassan, M Ali, S Tuarob, “Detecting Target Text related to Algorithmic Efficiency for Scholarly Big Data using Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network Model”, 19th International Conference on Asia Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL), Bangkok, Thailand, 2017 (Core Rank A, Acceptance ratio: 17.7%)

5. S Hassan, M Imran, T Iftikhar, Iqra Safder, M Shabir “Deep Stylometry and Lexical & Syntactic Features based Author Attribution on PLOS Digital Repository”, 19th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL), Bangkok, Thailand, 2017. (Core Rank A, Acceptance ratio: 17.7%)

Poster papers:

1. Iqra Safder, H Batool, S Hassan “Deep Feature Engineering using Full-text Scholarly Big Data: An Improved Information Retrieval Model”, 20th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL), Poster Paper , Hamilton, New Zealand , 2018 (Core Rank A, Acceptance ratio: 17.7%).

2. A Bakar, Iqra Safder, S Hassan, “Mining Algorithmic Complexity in Full Text Scholarly Documents”, 20th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL), Poster Paper, Hamilton, New Zealand, 2018 (Core Rank A, Acceptance ratio: 17.7%)

3. A Bakar, N Arshad, Iqra Safder, S Hassan, “Mining Scientific Trends Based on Topics in Conference Call for Papers”, 20th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL), Poster Paper, Hamilton , New Zealand, 2018 (Core Rank A, Acceptance ratio: 17.7%)

Awards and Scholarships:

1. Awarded Research Fellowship scholarship for 6 Months research visit at the University of Melbourne, Australia, by HEC Pakistan, 2020. (Not availed because of COVID-19 travel restrictions)

2. Awarded ICDM Student Travel Award (a travel award to partially support conference visit), Nov 2018.

3. Awarded Publications Journal Student Travel Grant (a travel award to support outstanding young students), June 2018.

4. Recipient of Travel grant by Punjab Higher Education Commission Pakistan, 2017.

5. Doctoral Scholarship to pursue Ph.D. studies by Information Technology University, Pakistan, 2016-2019.

6. Recipient of Punjab Educational Endowment Fund, an excellence merit Scholarship for the