SARAH ABDELLAHI

I am a Human Computer Interaction PhD student at the department of Software and Information Systems at the UNC Charlotte.

 

My Undergrad degree is in software engineering, I used to work as the research coordinator and teacher in the Isfahan Mathematics house, was a member of the design committee and jury of international math A-lympiads organized by the University of Utrecht, had a full time job as a researcher and trainer in one of the best Iranian network research centers, and have several certificates in different Iranian traditional art fields. And I used to do these activities in some overlapping periods.

 

“How can you like such irrelevant activities?”, “Why/How do you spend time on so many different fields?”. These are some of the questions I used to answer back in Iran. Maybe it was because of my concentration on the network that I had not heard of HCI by then to explain that all these come together in a field named Human computer interaction. But always believed all I do are relevant and necessary. “Think about some of these as handy tools! I need to understand how people think to provide them what they need”. I never felt I was lost between different interests or it is difficult to choose one. For me, math was a tool to analyze, education (and sometimes psychology) was an opportunity to interact with people and observe their way of thinking, and art was required for a good presentation. 

 

Hence, becoming a student of HCI has brought me the best oportunity to combine all my interests together.