Didar Zowghi

Didar connects requirements engineering with practical questions about whose needs AI systems serve. The co-developed inclusivity question bank and systematic review provide resources for researchers, practitioners and policymakers to examine inclusion across development and oversight. This work makes an often vague software quality concern easier to discuss and assess, supported by sustained teaching, mentoring and research community leadership.

Didar Zowghi is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO and Emeritus Professor at UTS, leading science teams focused on diversity and inclusion in AI alongside requirements engineering for responsible systems. Decades of practice unite software industry roles across the UK and Australia with 22 years at the University of Technology Sydney, encompassing leadership in software engineering and human-centred technology design.

In recent research, Didar co-developed a 253-question bank for assessing AI inclusivity across people, data, processes, systems and governance, evaluated using AI-generated personas. A co-authored systematic review of 48 papers on diversity and inclusion in AI further mapped challenges, potential solutions and research gaps, helping translate inclusive principles into concrete practices during software design and assessment.

Teaching, mentoring and research community leadership remain central to this contribution. Extensive conference leadership, editorial roles, keynotes and industry seminars have fostered knowledge exchange between academia and industry, earning Didar the IEEE Computer Society TCSE Distinguished Educator award in 2022.