Dipto Das

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed in the Department of Computer Science and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, where I work with Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed and Shion Guha. My research focuses on the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Social Computing, Human-Centered AI, Algorithmic Fairness and Bias, and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Specifically, I conduct research on how people participate in social, political, and cultural discourse through online communities, how algorithmic systems (e.g., language models) shape users' interaction and experience in various contexts, and how we should conceptualize their ethics and fairness across different languages, social groups and underserved communities, political values, and cultural practices. My research has appeared at premier venues including ACM CHI, CSCW, and ICTD and been recognized with Best Paper Honorable Mentions and covered by prominent media outlets.

I completed my PhD and MS in Information Science from the University of Colorado Boulder, where I worked with Bryan Semaan. Previously, I received an MS in Computer Science from Missouri State University and a BSEngg in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. I have more than seven years of teaching experience at university level.

Click here to download my complete CV

Name Pronunciation

Dip-toh (Dipto) Daash (Das). Dipto means enlightened in Bengali. Click the audio player below to listen to the pronunciation of my name.

Spelling in Bengali: দীপ্ত দাস
Pronouns: He/him/his

Research

A visual representation of online communities.

Social, Cultural, and Political Discourse Online

Online platforms often serve as the "third space" or "public sphere" for people to foster a sense of community, where they engage in social, political, and cultural discourse. In this project, I examine how people shape narratives and initiate collective actions through these online communities and how understanding their interaction with and through these platforms help us understand people's sociopolitical perspectives. My prior work in this space has looked into conversations around indigeneity, minority identity, and contemporary local and global politics.

Reference papers: [CSCW '24a] [CSCW '24b] [CHI '22] [ICTD '22]

A visual representation of panoptic governance on Quora.

Experience and Interaction with Algorithmic Systems

This questions how people experience and interact with algorithmic systems in contexts shaped by collective power, precarity, and institutional control. Through studies in a wide range of contexts, such as platform governance, gig work, and public services, I analyze how algorithmic systems mediate access, recognition, surveillance, and accountability in everyday life.

Reference papers: [CSCW '25] [CHI '25] [JCSCW] [ICTD '24] [CSCW '21] [ICTD '20]

A visual representation of audits of Bengali sentiment analysis tools.

Fairness and Bias in Low-Resource Language Models

My work on fairness and bias in low-resource language models examines how linguistic, cultural, and demographic underrepresentation shapes model behavior and evaluation. By developing new corpora, auditing techniques, and community-centered evaluation frameworks, I surface the limitations of dominant approaches and advocate for more equitable language technologies.

Reference papers: [CHI '25] [CHI '24] [EACL '23 (C3NLP)]

A visual diagram of Mod-guide, a moderation feedback system.

Computational Models to Support User Interaction

Based on the empirical findings of my studies in other projects, my research often leads to developing computational models that facilitate and support user interaction in online platforms. Previously, I worked on identifying affective aspects (e.g., sarcasm, difficulty) of online content through computational modeling of social media content. Through multimodal approaches, I develop models and datasets that seek to foster user engagement and content routing.

Reference papers: [HCC '19] [TransAI '19] [OzCHI '18] [APSEC '18] [ICMI '18] [ICCBD '18] [DEV '16]

Publications

Please refer to my Google Scholar page for a full list with citations.

Peer-Reviewed Journal and Conference Papers

Ben Zefeng Zhang, Dipto Das, and Bryan Semaan. 2025. Identity Alignment and the Sociotechnical Mechanisms of Reconfiguring Emotional Labor in Transnational Gig Education Platforms. To appear In Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices (JCSCW).
Divyanshu Kumar Singh, Dipto Das, and Bryan Semaan. 2025. The Power of Language: Resisting Western Heteropatriarchal Normative Writing Standards. To appear In Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25).
Erina Seh-Young Moon, Devansh Saxena, Dipto Das, and Shion Guha. 2025. The Datafication of Care in Public Homelessness Services. To appear In Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25).
Best Paper Honorable Mention
Ananya Bhattacharjee, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Dipto Das, S M Taiabul Haque, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2025. Residual Mobilities and Religious Practices: Exploring the Experiences of the Hindu Migrants in Canada. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction: ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (PACMHCI: CSCW '25).
Achhiya Sultana*, Dipto Das*, Saadia Binte Alam, Mohammad Shidujaman, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2024. A Civics-Oriented Approach to Understanding Intersectionally Marginalized Users' Experience with Hate Speech Online. In Proceedings of International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD '24). * Equal contribution, student author is put first.
Dipto Das, Dhwani Gandhi, and Bryan Semaan. 2024. Reimagining Communities through Transnational Decolonial Discourse: The Case of Online Video-Mediated Platforms. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction: ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (PACMHCI: CSCW '24).
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat*, Dipto Das*, Arpon Podder, Mahiratul Jannat, Robert Soden, Bryan Semaan, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2024. The Politics of Fear and the Experience of Bangladeshi Religious Minority Communities Using Social Media Platforms. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction: ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (PACMHCI: CSCW '24). * Equal contribution.
Dipto Das, Shion Guha, Jed Brubaker, and Bryan Semaan. 2024. The "Colonial Impulse" of Natural Language Processing: An Audit of Bengali Sentiment Analysis Tools and Their Identity-based Biases. In Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24).
Dipto Das, Shion Guha, and Bryan Semaan. 2023. Toward Cultural Bias Evaluation Datasets: The Case of Bengali Gender, Religious, and National Identity. In Proceedings of Workshop on Cross-Cultural Considerations in NLP at the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL-C3NLP '23).
Dipto Das, A.K.M. Najmul Islam, S M Taiabul Haque, Jukka Vuorinen, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2022. Understanding the Strategies and Practices of Facebook Microcelebrities for Engaging in Sociopolitical Discourses. In Proceedings of International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD '22).
Dipto Das and Bryan Semaan. 2022. Collaborative Identity Decolonization as Reclaiming Narrative Agency: Identity Work of Bengali Communities on Quora. In Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22).
Dipto Das, Carsten Østerlund, and Bryan Semaan. 2021. "Jol" or "Pani"?: How Does Governance Shape a Platform's Identity? In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction: ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (PACMHCI: CSCW '21).
Best Paper Honorable Mention
Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion
Abdul Kawsar Tushar, Iffat Jahan Antara, Dipto Das, Priyank Chandra, Tanjir Rashid Soron, Md Munirul Haque, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2020. We Need More Power to Stand Up: Designing to Combat Stigmatization of the Caregivers of Children with Autism in Urban Bangladesh. In Proceedings of International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD '20).
Dipto Das and Anthony J. Clark. 2019. Satire vs Fake News: You Can Tell by the Way They Say It. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Transdisciplinary AI (TransAI '19).
Dipto Das and Anthony J. Clark. 2019. Construct of Sarcasm on social media platform. In Proceedings of IEEE international conference on humanized computing and communication (HCC '19).
Sk. Adnan Hassan, Dipto Das, Anindya Iqbal, Amiangshu Bosu, Rifat Shahriyar, and Toufique Ahmed. 2018. SOQDE: A Supervised Learning Based Question Difficulty Estimation Model for Stack Overflow In Proceedings of IEEE Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC '18).
Hasan Shahid Ferdous, Dipto Das, and Farhana Murtaza Choudhury. 2018. Social Media Question Asking (SMQA): Whom Do We Tag and Why? In Proceedings of Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (OzCHI '18).
Dipto Das and Anthony J. Clark. 2018. Sarcasm Detection on Flickr Using a CNN. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computing and Big Data (ICCBD '18).

Workshops Co-organized

Louisa Kayah Williams, Rayan Awad Alim, Reem Talhouk, Marisol Wong-Villacres, Lynn Kirabo Hixon, Carleen Maitland, Tajanae Harris, Vishal Sharma, Dipto Das, Bryan Semaan, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, and Robert Soden. 2024. HCI, Mobility Justice, and Migration in the Face of Climate Crisis. In ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '24).
Dipto Das, Parboti Roy, Carlos Toxtli-Hernández, Kagonya Awori, Morgan Vigil-Hayes, Monojit Choudhury, Neha Kumar, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, and Bryan Semaan. 2023. Conceptualizing Indigeneity in Social Computing. In ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '23).
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Ayesha Bhimdiwala, Ananya Bhattacharjee, Amna Batool, Dipto Das, Nusrat Jahan Mim, Abdullah Hasan Safir, Sharifa Sultana, Taslima Akter, C. Estelle Smith, Bryan Semaan, Shaimaa Lazem, Michael Muller, Robert Soden, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2023. Many Worlds of Ethics: Ethical Pluralism in CSCW. In ACM Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '23).
Vikram Kamath Cannanure, Delvin Varghese, Cuauhtemoc Rivera-Loaiza, Faria Noor, Dipto Das, Pranjal Jain, Meiyin Chang, Marisol Wong-Villacres, Naveena Karusala, Nova Ahmed, Sarina C Till, Bernard Ijesunor Akhigbe, Melissa Densmore, Susan Dray, Christian Sturm, and Neha Kumar. 2023. HCI Across Borders: Towards Global Solidarity. In ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23).
Vikram Kamath Cannanure, Naveena Karusala, Cuauhtemoc Rivera-Loaiza, Annu Sible Prabhakar, Rama Adithya Varanasi, Anupriya Tuli, Dilrukshi Gamage, Faria Noor, David Nemer, Dipto Das, Susan Dray, Christian Sturm, and Neha Kumar. 2022. HCI Across Borders: Navigating Shifting Borders at CHI. In ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22).

Selected Workshop Papers, Posters, and Doctoral Consortia

Ben Zefeng Zhang, Dipto Das, and Bryan Semaan. 2024. Identity Alignment and the Sociotechnical Reconfigurations of Emotional Labor in Transnational Gig-education Platforms. In Quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology and the Society for Social Studies of Science (EASST-4S '24). [Position paper]
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Dipto Das, Dylan Thomas Doyle, Nusrat Jahan Mim, Zaidat Ibrahim, Sharifa Sultana, C. Estelle Smith, Jed Brubaker, Robert Soden, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2024. Religion, faith and spirituality, secularism, disciplinary paradigms. In Northeast HCI Meeting (Northeast HCI '24). [Position paper]
Dipto Das. 2023. Studying Multi-dimensional Marginalization of Identity from Decolonial and Postcolonial Perspectives. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '23). [Doctoral consortium]
Dipto Das. 2023. Decolonization through Technology and Decolonization of Technology. In ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP '23). [Doctoral consortium]
Dipto Das and Bryan Semaan. 2022. Decolonial and Postcolonial Computing Research: A Scientometric Exploration. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '22). [Poster]
Dipto Das, Arpon Podder, and Bryan Semaan. 2022. A Sociomaterial Perspective on Trace Data Collection: Strategies for Democratizing and Limiting Bias. In ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS '22). [Note]
Dipto Das, Malay Bhattacharyya, Laura S. Gaytan-Lugo, Ebtisam Alabdulqader, and Nova Ahmed. 2022. Importance of Digital Profile Pictures on Social Media Perceived by Different Groups. In ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS '22). [Note]
Joshua Introne, Dipto Das, Akit Kumar, and Lizhen Liang. 2022. Mapping Belief Landscapes in Social Media. In International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2 '22). [Position paper]
Dipto Das and Bryan Semaan. 2020. quoras: A Python API for Quora Data Collection to Increase Multi-Language Social Science Research. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '20). [Poster]
Dipto Das, Md. Forhad Hossain, and Anthony J. Clark. 2019. Understanding the Attention Model of Humans in Sarcastic Videos. In IEEE International Conference on Transdisciplinary AI (TransAI '19). [Short paper]
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Dipto Das, Najmul Islam, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. 2019. Microcelebrities in Bangladesh. In HCI Across Borders and Intersections Workshop at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI-HCIxB '19). [Position paper]
Dipto Das and Anthony J. Clark. 2018. Sarcasm Detection on Facebook: A Supervised Learning Approach. In ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI '18). [Late breaking work]
Md Fazlay Rabbi Masum Billah, Dipto Das, Imtiaz Karim, Shuha Nabila, and Arnob Paul. 2017. Cost-Efficient Smart Street Lighting System. In International Conference on Networking, Systems, and Security (NSysS '17). [Poster]
Anurata Prabha Hridi, Dipto Das, Md Monowar Anjum, and Tanmay Das. 2016. Faster Evacuation after Disaster: Finding Alternative Routes Using Probable Human Behavior. In ACM SIGCAS Annual Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV '16). [Poster]

Teaching

Instructor of Record

Spring 2025: INFO 2301: Quantitative Reasoning, University of Colorado Boulder
Spring 2025: INFO 1301: Statistics for Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder
Fall 2024: INFO 2301: Quantitative Reasoning, University of Colorado Boulder
Fall 2024: INFO 1301: Statistics for Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder
Spring 2024: INFO 4609: User-Centered Design, University of Colorado Boulder
Spring 2023: INFO 1301: Statistics for Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder
Fall 2017: CSE 401: Compiler Design, Dhaka International University
Fall 2017: CSE 301: Algorithm Design and Analysis, Dhaka International University
Fall 2017: CSE 209: Computer Organization and Architecture, Dhaka International University

Teaching Assistant

Fall 2023: INFO 1111: Understanding the World Through Data, University of Colorado Boulder
Fall 2022: INFO 1301: Statistics for Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder
Spring 2022: INFO 1201: Computational Reasoning, University of Colorado Boulder
Fall 2021: INFO 1201: Computational Reasoning, University of Colorado Boulder
Spring 2021: IST 300: Digital Platforms, Syracuse University
Fall 2020: IST 421: Information Visualization, Syracuse University
Spring 2020: IST 343: Data in Society, Syracuse University
Fall 2019: IST 649: Human Interaction with Computers, Syracuse University
Spring 2019: CSC 130: The World of Computer Science, Missouri State University
Spring 2019: CSC 131: Computational Thinking, Missouri State University
Fall 2018: CSC 130: The World of Computer Science, Missouri State University
Spring 2018: CSC 131: Computational Thinking, Missouri State University

Personal Interests

Plain and old pencil sketch is my go-to medium, but I do paint with acrylic and water color depending on the subject. Human figures with abstractions connecting those with social and cultural sentiments is what I often consider as the topic of my drawings. A series of five paintings I worked on during grad school was "Durga" depicting different ways divine feminine energy is culturally conceptualized in Bengal. Besides sketching, I love traveling to new places. Be that relaxing on the beach in the St. Martin's Island on a full moon light or hiking on high-altitude tracks in Colorado, I hum my favorite classical Bengali or American country music. You can check out my Soundcloud profile. With an interested group, I also enjoy telling or listening to stories. Of what kind? The time I was stuck in an airport for three days straight, or the time I sneaked out of house in middle school! Maybe, you can taste some of my recipes as we share those stories.

Durga Puja is one of the biggest festvals in Bengal with cultural grounding in Hinduism and historic ties to the colonial period. The image shows an acrylic painting of Goddess Durga by Dipto in 2022.

Two fishing boats somewhere on the Naf river on the way to the Cox's Bazar.

A snap of the Maroon Bells in Aspen, CO taken by Dipto in 2021.

Contact

University of Toronto
Department of Computer Science
Room # 5166, Bahen Centre for Information Technology
Saint George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4, Canada

dipto [dot] das [at] utoronto [dot] ca