Agha Ali Raza

Grants

Research grants

As lead PI on the Pakistan side, more than USD 1.6M in competitive research grants, and, together with the Gates-funded National AI Hub, over USD 5.8M in research funding overall.

2026–
Gates Foundation: National AI Hub for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health. Speech & Language Technologies Vertical Lead. Program funding USD 4.2M.
2023
Google ExploreCSR: broadening participation in computing research. USD 32,000. PI.
2022
Meta: Foundational Integrity Research. USD 50,000.
2021–22
Gates Foundation: leveraging the Polio Helpline for routine-immunization and MNCH awareness. USD 272,000. LUMS PI, with the University of Michigan and UC Davis.
2020–21
Facebook / Meta Research: countering deepfake misinformation among low-digital-literacy populations. USD 90,000. Co-PI.
2018–21
National Academies of Sciences (NAKFI): Digital Street Theater for global maternal and child health education. USD 500,000. LUMS PI, with the University of Michigan, the University of Cape Town, and ITU.
2018–20
National Institutes of Health (NIH): impact evaluation of Super Abbu, a speech-based MNCH platform. USD 250,000. LUMS PI, with UC Davis and the University of Michigan.
2018–20
HEC National Center in Big Data & Cloud Computing: speech forensics. PKR 120M. LUMS PI.
2019–21
HEC NRPU: AI-based automatic Urdu plagiarism detection. PKR 4.5M. PI.
2017
Google: technology and gender disparity. USD 20,000. Co-PI.
2016–17
UNICEF Innovations Fund: Rah-e-Maa, IVR services for birth-preparedness awareness. USD 100,000. PI.
2014–15
GIZ: Hello Rozgar, improving access to skills training and employment. €1,000,000. Technical Lead, with CMU.

Consultancy

  • IVR and education consultant, Punjab E-Learn project.
  • HCI consultant, multimodal Weather dialog project, with the Center for Language Engineering and the Pakistan Meteorological Department.