User:Ruwa AbuHweidi
Ruwa F. Abu Hweidi
PhD Researcher in Computer Science | Specialist in LLMs & Digital Forensics
Ruwa Abu Hweidi is a PhD researcher at Birzeit University, dedicated to advancing research in Artificial Intelligence. Her doctoral work focuses on Large Language Models (LLMs), encompassing model training, supervised fine-tuning, and comprehensive evaluation methodologies. She has developed specialized expertise in Low-Resource Languages, with particular emphasis on Arabic Natural Language Processing and culturally-aware language technologies.
She holds a Master's degree (with Excellent distinction) in Cybercrime and Digital Evidence Analysis from Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie (PTUK), where her thesis introduced VCAT (Video Content Analysis Tool)—a novel digital forensic framework designed to enhance video evidence analysis in criminal investigations. This research addressed critical challenges in digital forensics, combining computer vision, optical character recognition, and metadata analysis techniques.
Ruwa has contributed to the academic community through peer-reviewed publications in cybersecurity and digital forensics. Her research on social engineering attacks and frameworks, published in the International Journal of Computing and Digital Systems (IJCDS), has been recognized for its comprehensive systematic literature review approach. At international conferences (SmartNets 2023), she presented groundbreaking work on forensic investigations of social media messaging on Android platforms and the impact of TRIM functions on data recovery from solid-state drives. She has also participated in large-scale collaborative Arabic NLP projects, including the PEARL multimodal dataset (representing the Palestinian component among 37 researchers across the Arab world).
Beyond her research, Ruwa brings valuable practical experience from her tenure (2004-2018) as a Technology Science educator in the Palestinian Ministry of Education, where she coordinated ICT integration projects, managed international school partnerships (ISA Award), supervised educational robotics competitions (First Lego League), and delivered comprehensive technology training programs. She currently serves as a reviewer for the IJCDS.