DIA-HARM Paper Accepted at the 2026 ACL Main Conference
My paper was accepted at the 2026 ACL Main Conference. This research is titled, DIA-HARM: Dialectal Disparities in Harmful Content Detection Across 50 English Dialects. DIA-HARM is the first benchmark for evaluating disinformation detection robustness across 50 English dialects spanning U.S., British, African, Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific varieties, with the D3 corpus of 195K samples and an evaluation of 16 detection models. This work is a collaboration with Penn State, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the University of Dublin. Coauthors include — Matt Murtagh, Ali Al-Lawati, Uchendu Uchendu, Adaku Uchendu & Dongwon Lee.
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I am a PhD candidate in Informatics in the College of IST at Penn State University, where I conduct research at the PIKE Research Lab under the guidance of Dr. Dongwon Lee. I specialize in AI/ML research focused on Information Integrity, Safe and Ethical AI, including combating harmful content across multiple languages and modalities. My research spans low-resource multilingual NLP, generative AI, and adversarial machine learning, with work extending across 79 languages. I have published 12 papers with 260+ citations in premier venues including ACL, EMNLP, IEEE, and NAACL.
My doctoral research focuses on bridging the digital language divide through transfer learning, classification (NLU), generation (NLG), adversarial attacks, and developing end-to-end AI pipelines using RAG and Agentic AI workflows for combating multilingual threats. Drawing from my Grenadian background and knowledge of local Creole languages, I bring a global perspective to AI challenges, working to democratize state-of-the-art AI capabilities for underserved linguistic communities worldwide. My mission is to develop robust multilingual multimodal systems and mitigate evolving security vulnerabilities while enhancing access to human language technology through cutting-edge solutions.
As an NSF LinDiv Fellow, I conduct transdisciplinary research advancing human-AI language interaction for social good. I actively mentor 5+ research interns and teach Applied Generative AI courses. Through industry experience at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Interaction LLC, and Coalfire, I bridge academic research with practical applications in combating evolving security threats and enhancing global AI accessibility. I see multilingual advances and interdisciplinary collaboration as a competitive advantage, not a communication challenge. Beyond research, I stay active through dance, fitness, martial arts, and community service.