MARSAD Lab, previously known as the Data for Social Good (D4SG) Research Group, is an academic research lab led by Dr. Wajdi Zaghouani at Northwestern University in Qatar. The lab operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, language, and society in the Middle East and North Africa.
Research focuses on large language models, generative AI, digital platforms, and their social impact, with emphasis on Arabic language resources, dialectal NLP, social media analytics, and computational social sciences. The lab is supported by competitive grants from QNRF and QRDI in Qatar, HBKU internal programs, and Northwestern University (NU) including the AIM Lab and the Northwestern University (NU) Provost Office.
A selection of the lab's past and currently funded research projects.
The MARSAD Lab engages in active research collaborations with leading Arabic NLP groups and research institutions. These collaborations span joint projects, data development, and methodological innovation, including work with the CAMeL Lab at NYU Abu Dhabi, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, to name a few.