Ahana Biswas

About Me

I’m a PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh working at the intersection of Computational Social Science and Responsible AI, advised by Prof. Yu-Ru Lin. I work on understanding online discourse and engagement dynamics — a key part of my research involves drawing causal inferences from observational data to uncover the underlying mechanisms driving digital interactions. I am also deeply interested in the ethical dimensions of AI, particularly in addressing algorithmic bias and promoting fairness in socio-technical systems. Through my research, I aim to generate insights into how people engage in online communities while contributing to developing more responsible and interpretable AI systems.

Please feel free to reach out!

Research Interests

Computational Social Science, Network Analysis, Causal Inference, Responsible AI

News

• [Aug 2025] Presented a poster at PolNet-PACSS, Boston!
• [Jul 2025] Our paper titled ‘Toxic politics and TikTok engagement in the 2024 U.S. election’ has been accepted in Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
• [Jul 2025] Started summer internship at Phenom, developing human-understandable counterfactual explanations for AI-driven job matching models.
• [Jun 2025] Two oral presentations at ICWSM 2025, Copenhagen and Sunbelt 2025, Paris!
• [Apr 2025] Our latest findings on elite influence were featured in The Conversation!
• [Apr 2025] Passed my Comprehensive Exam!
• [Apr 2025] Presented a talk on the visibility dynamics of political elites at the IEEE Technical Symposium in Western Pennsylvania
• [Jul 2024] Our paper titled ‘Political Elites in the Attention Economy: Visibility Over Civility and Credibility?’ has been accepted to ICWSM 2025!
• [Jul 2024] Attended the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) and IC2S2 conference at the University of Pennsylvania
• [Mar 2024] Won People’s Choice Award in 3 Minute-Thesis Competition organized by School of Computing and Information at Pitt
• [Mar 2024] Passed my Preliminary exams (with Distinction)!

Publications

• Biswas, A., Javadian Sabet, A., & Lin, Y.-R. (2025). Toxic politics and TikTok engagement in the 2024 U.S. election. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. [DOI] [Dataset] [Code]
• Biswas, A., Lin, YR., Tai, YC., Desmarais BA. Political Elites in the Attention Economy: Visibility Over Civility and Credibility? Accepted in ICWSM 2025. [DOI]
• Biswas, A., Niven, T., Lin, YR. Political Narratives During the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling (SBP-BRiMS) 2023. [DOI]
• Mokhberi, M., Biswas, A., Masud, Z., et. al. 2023. Development of a COVID-19 related anti-Asian tweet data set: Quantitative study. JMIR Formative Research. [DOI]