Research Seminar: Kuheli Sai

March 31, 2026

1:00 p.m. CAT

A203

Data Science for Societal Good: Equitable and Sustainable Digital Infrastructure for a Connected World

Speaker: Kuheli Sai

More than half the world's population now uses social media, yet billions remain uncon-nected and next-generation wireless networks risk widening this gap further without inten-tional planning. Significant disparities persist in who benefits from technological advance-ments, and the communities most in need of connectivity are often the last to receive it. De-livering on the promise of next-generation networks requires deploying micro edge data cen-ters, small computing facilities at the network edge that enable the low-latency, high-band-width services these networks depend on. Where these facilities are placed fundamentally shapes who benefits from advanced connectivity. At the same time, these facilities demand substantial energy, and relying solely on the power grid increases carbon emissions while leaving infrastructure vulnerable to attacks, and outage that disproportionately affect under-served communities. To address these interconnected challenges, we developed a data-driven framework for equitable placement of micro edge data centers powered by renewable energy that balances digital readiness, energy availability, and network resilience. In this talk, we present our approach through case studies in two distinct U.S. urban contexts, demon-strating how open civic data, rooftop solar estimation, and computational methods can guide infrastructure deployment that serves all communities while advancing sustainability. The talk also presents a broader research agenda on interconnected ICT-enabled challenges spanning trust, security, public discourse, and the societal impact of digital platforms across the globe. The data-driven methodologies developed to address these challenges are scalable, open, and designed to be transferable beyond Global North.

Bio

Kuheli Sai develops data-driven solutions for the equitable and sustainable deployment of digital infrastructure, with a fo-cus on ensuring that next-generation connectivity reaches the communities most at risk of being left behind. Her research ap-plies data-driven and computational methods, spanning ma-chine learning, natural language processing, civic data analysis, and geospatial methods to address the intertwined challenges of digital divide, environmental sustainability, and network re-silience, problems that are as urgent in Kigali as they are in Pittsburgh. She earned her Ph.D. in Infor-mation Science from the University of Pittsburgh in December 2025, where her dissertation proposed a framework for placing solar-powered micro edge data centers in socioeconomically distressed neighborhoods using open civic data, machine learning, and multi-objective optimization. Her work spans two interconnected areas: (1) Data Science for Societal Good, and (2) Cybersecurity and Safety, with multiple published papers at internationally recognized IEEE venues. During her Ph.D., she in-terned twice as a Computational Science Intern at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Labora-tory, Fermilab, where she worked on machine learning-based cybersecurity research. She is a con-tributing researcher to the Global Social Media Experiment, a 23-country field study involving more than 200 researchers examining the causal effects of social media on polarization and well-being and serves as an expert collaborator in the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC), a UN initiative. She is a recipient of the University of Pittsburgh's Catherine Ofiesh and Gerald Orner Award for aca-demic excellence in the Ph.D. program and the university-wide Provost's Dissertation Completion Fel-lowship, was recognized as an invited Student Honoree at the 2025 university-wide Graduate and Professional Student Honors Convocation. Beyond research, Kuheli actively mentor students across multiple research projects and contributes to broadening participation in computing through service on program committees and mentoring initiatives at major conferences.

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