Myo Thida joins CS faculty
Myo Thida joins CS faculty
Clinical Assistant Professor Myo Thida joined the computer science department, bringing with her two decades of experience in teaching and education, government policymaking, research, and industry experience. Thida taught a summer class at UIC and joined UIC’s faculty full-time in August.
Before she arrived at UIC, Thida served as an assistant professor at Simon’s Rock at Bard College, New York. Thida aligned the school’s curriculum with industry expectations and focused on social-good applications and technical innovation. This spring, Bard’s Simon’s Rock campus closed.
Much of Thida’s career was spent in South- and Southeast- Asia. She was a faculty lecturer at Chiang-Mai University in Thailand, a lecturer at Parami University in Myanmar, and a lecturer and advisor at Dessung Skilling Program in Bhutan.
Thida also founded iSTAR Education, where she conducted seminars and workshops at government technological universities in Myanmar on data and video analytics research.
She was appointed vice president of SMVTI Vocational Training Institute in Myanmar by the country’s Ministry of Education and worked with both Myanmar and Singapore’s governments to develop and staff the school.
Thida also served as a national senior expert on computer science education in Myanmar, reforming the country’s government-run technical high schools and strengthening their curricula. She also conducted a rapid needs assessment for internally displaced people in the country’s Kachin state.
Research
Thida spent years in industry as well, working on software design and development, intelligence surveillance systems, and computer vision algorithms in Singapore. Some of these tools were used to monitor water quality in fish tanks.
Thida’s greatest passion is digitization and AI fairness, especially as it relates to developing countries and low-resource languages. Most AI models have not been trained on languages that are not widely spoken, placing speakers of these languages at a disadvantage when using these tools.
“I’m working on a few languages in Asia to figure out how we can make use of generative AI and reduce the gap between the rich and poor in developed and underdeveloped countries,” Thida said.
For example, sentiment analysis can quickly interpret news articles or scan job descriptions if AI tools know your language. Using English, you can find most of the information you want. The results might have a lot of hallucinations, but the tools are still useful.
The fact that government data can be inaccurate or missing in countries that restrict data sharing with the public compounds the challenge for citizens of these countries in the usefulness of AI tools.
Thida also is working on improving AI literacy in general.
She has previous grants from Canada’s International Development Research Center and a Women in Tech grant from the Open Society University Network.
Her early career achievements include the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award in 2008 and the 2012 IWA Applied Research Honour Award for her contributions as part of a research team. Thida was honored as an ASEAN-US Science and Technology Fellow in 2019 and received the ASEAN Science Diplomat Award in 2021.
Thida was named to the 2023 Asian Pacific Kindness and Leadership list for her work in promoting STEM education and empowering women, for advising Women in AI (Myanmar Chapter). In 2024, she was a finalist for the British Council’s Study UK Alumni Award in the Science and Sustainability category.
Thida is thrilled to be in Chicago and likes the size of UIC’s campus. She appreciates UIC’s strong engineering and computer science programs and appreciates the diversity of the student body.
“I came from a similar background to many students. I came from a developing country, and I was the first one in my family to go to overseas, studying in Singapore,” Thida said. “I struggled a lot. I understand, and it’s the reason I love teaching first-year students. I can see myself in the classroom.”
This semester, Thida is teaching CS112, Program Design.