From Nigeria to Arkansas: Stella Mbila-Uma’s Journey from COSMOS Research Center to a Bright Future in Tech
Stella “Ola” Mbila-Uma, a native of Abia State in Nigeria, was so fascinated with the research taking place at the Collaboration for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) Research Center at UA Little Rock that she knew she had to be a part of it.
“I was really drawn to the research,” Mbila-Uma said. “That is why I wanted to come here to study information science. I had family friends here in Arkansas, and they talked about how good the school is. Luckily, I got into the program and had the opportunity to work in the COSMOS Research Lab with Dr. Nitin Agarwal.”
After earning her undergraduate degree in physics from Covenant University in Nigeria, Mbila-Uma moved to Arkansas in 2022 to earn her master’s degree in information science, where she said she has enjoyed every experience of living in America.
“It has been a very exciting experience,” she said. “I enjoyed my stay here in Arkansas and at this school. I loved meeting people of different backgrounds. I am excited to see what the world holds after graduation.”
This semester Mbila-Uma was one of only 25 students from across the nation who received a New Face of Tech Scholarship from The 1,000 Dreams Fund. The organization funds scholarships for young women in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) fields and aims to empower students toward their greatest ambitions.
While at UA Little Rock, Mbila-Uma conducted research at COSMOS as part of the Indo Pacific Team, which focused on tracking misinformation in blog posts. She had the opportunity to publish two papers from this research – “Conducting Morality and Emotion Analysis on Blog Discourse” and “Analyzing Blogs about Uyghur Discourse using Topic Induced Hyperlink Network.”
“Conducting research at COSMOS pushes you to your full potential,” she said. “It helped me grow and strengthen my skill set for the future. There is so much storytelling in research, and that helped me in my role as a business analyst. I need to draw information from data to help people make informed decisions.”
After graduation, Mbila-Uma will be moving to San Diego, California, to work as a business system analyst at Intuit, an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. She received a full-time offer after working as an intern at the company last summer.
“I had a very interesting team that really wanted me to succeed,” she said. “They were there to help me at every point. I know Intuit will be a good place to grow my career.”
