Rumaisa "Rumi" Habib/رومیسہ حبیب

frog enthusiast, PhD student (in that order)

rumaisa {at} cs {dot} stanford {dot} edu | cv | pgp key | scholar

I am a fourth-year CS PhD candidate in the Empirical Security Research Group at Stanford University advised by Zakir Durumeric and funded by the Stanford Graduate Fellowship. My primary research interest is understanding the web at a global scale. I combine large-scale measurement and systems building to study how the web works in practice and who it actually serves, especially outside Western contexts. I aim to replace informal intuitions about the web with rigorous evidence that can inform both system design and policy. Before joining Stanford, I was at LUMS (BS ‘23).

At LUMS, I worked under the supervision of Ihsan Ayyub Qazi, Zafar Ayyub Qazi and Zartash Afzal Uzmi on efficient means to debloat websites & software.

You can see my full list of publications here.

# Select Publications/خصوصی اشاعتیں

"Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen": Towards a Modality-Aware Understanding of Unnecessary Resources on the Web

Rumaisa Habib, Balaji Balachandran, Nurullah Demir, Zakir Durumeric

We provide the first modality-aware measurement of unnecessary resources on the web. In doing so, we reveal an even larger issue of web bloat than previously understood and explore opportunities to build more efficient web tooling.

IMC 2026

description
ha.bib 
@inproceedings{habib2026fetch,
  title={"Stop trying to make fetch happen": Towards a Modality-Aware Understanding of Unnecessary Resources on the Web},
  author={Habib, Rumaisa and Balachandran, Balaji and Demir, Nurullah and Durumeric, Zakir},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference},
  year={2026}
}

Formalizing Dependence of Web Infrastructure

Rumaisa Habib, Kimberly Ruth, Gautam Akiwate, Zakir Durumeric

In this work, we introduce a rigorous statistical metric for Internet centralization. In doing so, we also uncover how regionalization—geopolitical dependence on the Internet—fundamentally affects centralization.

SIGCOMM 2025

🏆 IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize 2026

description
ha.bib 
@inproceedings{habib2025centralization,
  title={Formalizing Dependence of Web Infrastructure},
  author={Habib, Rumaisa and Ruth, Kimberly and Akiwate, Gautam and Durumeric, Zakir},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Conference},
  year={2025}
}

A Framework for Improving Web Affordability and Inclusiveness

Rumaisa Habib*, Sarah Tanveer*, Aimen Inam, Haseeb Ahmed, Ayesha Ali, Zartash Afzal Uzmi, Zafar Ayyub Qazi, Ihsan Ayyub Qazi [*Joint first authors]

We propose a novel framework and a fairness metric for rethinking Web architecture for affordability and inclusion.

SIGCOMM 2023

description code co_present ondemand_video
ha.bib 
@inproceedings{habib2023aw4a,
  title={A Framework for Improving Web Affordability and Inclusiveness},
  author={Habib, Rumaisa and Tanveer, Sarah and Inam, Aimen and Ahmed, Haseeb and Ali, Ayesha and Uzmi, Zartash Afzal and Qazi, Zafar Ayyub and Qazi, Ihsan Ayyub},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Conference},
  year={2023}
}
# Talks/تقریریں
# Teaching/تدریس
# Awards/ایوارڈز