Aliya holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Policy from the University of Minnesota. Prior to her current appointment Aliya worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, where she conducted research on governance of emerging technologies. Aliya’s research interests are in international and comparative higher education. Her current work focuses on the analysis of the experiences of international and local faculty in Kazakhstan, as well as on the barriers and factors contributing to university research capacity building in transitional economies. An important part of her work focuses on the experiences of females in higher education, including females in leadership positions, and females in STEM.