Faiza Umar Bawah is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Informatics at the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), Sunyani, where she has served since February 2018. With a strong background in computer science, she has research interests spanning human-computer interaction (HCI), artificial intelligence (AI), educational technologies, and systems analysis and design.
Faiza is particularly focused on the co-design and development of adaptive user interfaces for digital health applications in African contexts and has active involvement in the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Digital Diagnostics for African Health Systems— a collaboration between Imperial College London and the University of Ghana, funded by the UKRI Global Challenge Research Fund.
She has attracted and contributed to several competitive international research grants. Faiza is a member of an African Technology Policy Studies Network-funded project on AI-driven detection of crop pests and diseases on web and mobile platforms and previously contributed to an earlier phase of the same project, where her role centred on stakeholder training in the usability of AI applications for plant disease detection. She also served as a blended learning expert on the Partnership for Enhanced and Blended Learning (PEBL) West Africa Project, funded by the Australian Government through the Association of Commonwealth Universities. In 2024, she was selected as a Global Development Hub Fellow at Imperial College London.
Faiza has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in reputable international journals and conference proceedings, including Scientific African, Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, Data in Brief, Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Africa Education Review, and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), among others. Her work covers areas such as deep learning for medical image analysis, AI-based disease detection, educational data mining, blockchain-based health systems, digital diagnostics, and the design of clinical decision support systems for low-resource settings.
Faiza is an active contributor to the academic community, having presented and exhibited at several prominent forums, including a poster presentation at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the EDCTP Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, workshops organised by the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Digital Diagnostics for African Health Systems, and the Rwanda Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Conference.
Beyond her academic work, Faiza is committed to community engagement and outreach. She has served as a speaker at the Ghana Muslim Professionals Abroad webinar and at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences public forum and has volunteered as a mentor for the Girls-In-ICT Day Celebration organised by Ghana’s Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation.
Faiza is a member of several professional organisations, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Ghana Science Association, the Institute of ICT Professionals Ghana (IIPGH), the Internet Society (Ghana Chapter), the African Forum for Research and Education in Health (AFREHealth), and the Organisation for Women in Science for the Developing World, Ghana Chapter (OWSD).