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Ishtiaque Ahmed, an assistant professor in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, has received an award from the for his project exploring the use of a community-powered AI tool to tackle online hate.

Ahmed will use the award to support partnerships with the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice and the Foundation for a Path Forward to better address online hate speech aimed at Chinese and Muslim communities in Canada.

Ahmed and his partners aim to develop, deploy and evaluate a community-powered AI system to improve content moderation on social media. 

“I see the impact of this award in two ways. First, it will help me enormously to build my academic program, to strengthen my relationship with the community partners here in Canada,” Ahmed said. “But I’m also excited about the real-life impact of this problem, because we are going to help these communities to handle online hate speech. To be able to make such an impact is most rewarding for me.”

The Connaught Community Partnership Research Program aims to help create and nurture partnerships between U of T scholars and community partners that support community-driven research.

Ahmed is one of four U of T scholars to receive awards from the program this year. The others are Jaris Swidrovich at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, Amaya Perez-Brumer in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Alicia Hawkins at U of T Mississauga.