Zakia Hammal, a systems scientist in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and an assistant research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious Women in AI Awards North America 2023.

Hammal is a finalist in the AI Researcher of the Year category.

 The Women in AI Awards recognize the outstanding contributions and achievements of women in the field of artificial intelligence. The awards celebrate women entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators who have made outstanding contributions to AI and have been pioneers — dreaming big and charting a path for the future of the technology.

At CMU, Hammal leads interdisciplinary research efforts to build multimodal artificial intelligence agents focused on understanding and modeling human emotion and physical and cognitive states. She blends computer science, machine learning, AI, and social and behavioral psychology to address a broad range of topics and applications in emotion AI and nonverbal behavior for health informatics.

Finalists and winners in 10 categories and 11 special jury recognitions will be honored in person during the WAI Awards NA 2023 Ceremony in partnership with the Big Data and AI Conference this October in Toronto. The event is an opportunity to honor the exceptional accomplishments of women in artificial intelligence across North America.

More information about Women in AI and the awards are available on the organization’s website.