Mai ElSherief

Research interests

• Social computing
• Natural language processing and information retrieval
• Human–computer interaction

Education

• PhD in Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara  
• MSc in Networks and Wireless Communication, Nile University — Egypt
• BSc in Computer Engineering, Cairo University — Egypt

Biography

Mai ElSherief is an assistant professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston.

Since her doctoral days, ElSherief has been passionate about researching natural language processing (NLP) and computing for social good. As she grew increasingly interested in making online spaces safer, she began working to improve pro-social behavior and minimize harm online by detecting and mitigating biases in NLP systems. At Khoury College, ElSherief teaches NLP courses, excited to inspire and mentor her students just as her advisors did for her. 

Before joining Khoury College in 2023, ElSherief interned at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, was a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, and taught at the University of California San Diego. During that stretch, she boosted the accuracy of hate speech detection and classification models, investigated harmful behaviors in social VR spaces, designed the first set of online misinformation classification systems and detection models related to opioid use disorder, and conducted the first studies into the psychological impacts of active shooter drills on the well-being of school communities. 

Outside of academia, ElSherief is a third-dan black belt and mom to a German Shepherd and a Golden Retriever. 

Labs and groups

• Computing for Social Good (CSG) Lab
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) Research Group