Dr. Noorhan Abbas

Profile

Professional Overview

I am a passionate educator and researcher with a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models and Data Science. At the University of Leeds, I serve as a Teaching Fellow within the School of Computer Science, where I lead the Programming for Data Science module and the Data Mining and Text Analytics module as part of the online MSc in Artificial Intelligence programme. My expertise lies in blending cutting-edge AI methodologies with practical teaching strategies to foster an engaging and impactful learning environment.

Research and Collaboration

I am actively engaged in advancing AI research and its applications in education and cross-disciplinary domains. As a member of the LIDA Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) and the AI Research Group, I contribute to collaborative efforts aimed at enhancing research and knowledge in these fields.

A notable highlight of my work is my contribution to the Edubots project, an Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance initiative designed to improve educational outcomes and attainment levels within European higher education. This project emphasised best practices in chatbot technology, fostering collaboration among educators across institutions.

Additionally, I have been privileged to organise and participate in influential conferences and workshops, including the Turing Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Text Analytics for Education Resources workshop (AI4EduRes) in 2023. Resources from this workshop, including video recordings and presentation slides, are available for reference here.

Achievements and Research Funding

• Alan Turing Institute – 2022 Post-Doctoral Enrichment Award
  • Grant Number: 2022PEA\100083
• Successful supervision of over 35 MSc students, several of whom have achieved peer-reviewed publications.
• Organiser of Edubots conferences and other prominent workshops.
• Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in recognition of teaching excellence.

Teaching and Mentorship

I have extensive experience in designing and leading modules that integrate AI, Large Language Models and Natural Language Processing into practical, real-world applications. As a module leader, I focus on equipping students with foundational programming skills, data analysis techniques, and critical thinking necessary to thrive in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.

My mentorship includes supervising MSc and PhD students, with several mentees contributing to award-winning research, including a Best Student Paper Award at the BCS-SGAI Conference in 2023.

Research interests

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Systems
• AI in Education and Assessment
• Cross-Lingual NLP and Translation for Underrepresented Languages
• Chatbot Technology for Collaborative Learning

Qualifications

• PhD in Technology and Policing (Lancaster University).
• MSc in AI and Text Analytics, University of Leeds.
• BSc in Computer Science and Business Administration. American University in Cairo.

Student education

Student feedback:

“I like the Monday live meeting. It brought more interactions with students and the teacher.  The teacher Noorhan is very responsible and always responsive. I am impressed by her energy and patience. I feel thankful!”

”In Data Science, you can lean heavily on Noorhan. She’s the heart and soul of the module. She makes the content very enjoyable and prepares you well for the assessments and projects even if you’re having difficulties.”

“I just wanted to thank you for the time and passion that you put into the teaching for the Data Science module, which I very much enjoyed. I particularly appreciated the added insights that you provided during the webinars on the wider issues.” 

“As I was trying to get foothold of the situation, the instructor lend her hand to keep me afloat. She was very encouraging and spend time to answer all my question. Dr. Noorhan had never said that the time was running out. Because of her knowledge and patience, the picture started to get clearer. By third week, I felt confident. At the end of the module, while doing the assessment 2, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I had learned. Now that I have submitted deliverables for the final assessment, I feel proud that I reached a milestone, a feeling of achievement.” 

Research MSc Students

• Jarrad Jinks – Intermediate Task Ensembline for Sarcasm Detection – Awarded Best Student Paper Award in the BCS-SGAI International Conference on AI 2023 
• Cameron Flanagan – Sentiment analysis of COVID 19 Vaccine Brands over the course of the pandemic
• Abhishek Gurumadhva – Creating A Teaching Assistant By Classifying Texts To Make Internet Recommendations
• Umar Jamil – BigLip: a pipeline for building data sets for lip-reading models
• Uttam Paul – Demand forecasting model to address liquor sales volatility during the Covid-19 pandemic 
• Waleed Kareem – Fighting Lies with Intelligence: Using Large Language Models and Chain of Thoughts technique to Combat Fake News
• Cassandra Mingjie Zhou – Evaluation of Legal Judgement Prediction Models and Their Fairness
• Dylan Turnley – Sense Memory

Current postgraduate researchers

• Rawan Bin Shiha