Safinah is an Assistant Professor at NYU Steinhardt in the Department of Administration Leadership and Technology. Prior to her appointment at NYU, she earned her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a part of the Personal Robots Group at MIT Media Lab . Her research is about studying how tiny humans create with AI, and how it influences their creativity. She designs and studies technologies to foster creative learning. She develops child-robot interactions for behavioral learning such curiosity, creativity and growth mindset. She designs inclusive creative AI literacy curricula and teaching materials for k-12 students and teachers. She likes making art, games, and robots. I teach k-12 students about robots and making games.

Before MIT, she spent time researching education technology, learning games and accessibility at Carnegie Mellon University, Facebook AI Research and Twitch. She was a Microsoft Research Fellow, MIT’s Teaching Development Fellow (TDF) and MIT’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) fellow.