Sara Moussawi

Dr. Sara Moussawi is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sara has been teaching information systems courses since 2013 on the topics of innovation, information systems consulting, personal intelligent agents, mobile web design and development and data mining. In 2014, she received the John A. Elliot teaching award at the City University of New York which recognizes teaching that rises above and beyond to a sustained performance of excellence. Her research aims to explore the psychological dimensions of users’ interaction with information systems, focusing on two information artifacts: intelligent agents and crowdsourcing platforms.

Dr. Moussawi’s research and teaching interests shed light on the relevant theoretical lens and empirical viewpoints concerning user experience and, more broadly, innovation topics. Her work investigates how users’ perceptions impact their motivations, their emotions, and ultimately their cognitive decisions. Her research interests are motivated by the availability of increasingly sophisticated digital agents that users are adopting, as well as the rise of crowd-work as an alternative model of work. She is very intrigued to explore these themes in the context of the power of the algorithm vs. the power of the crowd.

Education

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Moussawi earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in Business with an Information Systems focus from Baruch College of the City University of New York. She also has an M. Phil. in Business from the City University of New York, an MBA and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the American University of Beirut. She also worked for several years as a web developer and programmer analyst at the American University of Beirut and Fransabank in Beirut, Lebanon, respectively.

Publications

Selected Publications

• Moussawi S., Koufaris M., Benbunan-Fich R. (2020). “How Perceptions of Intelligence and Anthropomorphism Affect Adoption of Personal Intelligent Agents”. Electronic Markets.
• Moussawi, S., Quesenberry, J., Weinberg, R., Sanders, M., Lovett, M., Heimann, L., Sooriamurthi, R. and Taylor, D. (2020). “Improving Student-Driven Feedback and Engagement in the Classroom: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Speed Dating Model.” International Journal of Innovation in Education.
• Moussawi S., Koufaris M. (2019). “Developing Measures for Perceived Intelligence and Perceived Anthropomorphism”. Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, USA.
• Moussawi S. (2018). “User Experiences with Personal Intelligent Agents: A Sensory, Physical, Functional and Cognitive Affordances View”. Proceedings of the Association of Computing Machinery SIGMIS Conference on Computers and People Research, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, USA.
• Moussawi S., Koufaris M. (2015). “Working on Low-Paid Micro-Task Crowdsourcing Platforms: An Existence, Relatedness and Growth View”. Proceedings of the Thirty Sixth International Conference on Information Systems, Texas, USA.
• Moussawi S., Koufaris M. (2013). “The Crowd on the Assembly Line: Designing Tasks for a Better Crowdsourcing Experience”. Proceedings of the Thirty Fourth International Conference on Information Systems, Milan, Italy.