Rita Orji is a Nigerian-Canadian Computer Science Professor, a Canada Research Chair in Persuasive Technology, and the Director of the Persuasive Computing Lab at Dalhousie University in Canada.
Her work is in the area of human-computer interaction with a major focus on designing interactive systems to achieve various health and well-being objectives. She has won over 70 awards and recognitions from both national and international organizations. She has addressed a United Nations panel about the status of women at the Parliament of Canada. Rita grew up in Enugu State Nigeria.
She is Igbo by the tribe. She was born and raised by parents (Mr. and Mrs. Maria and Okonkwo Orji) who never attended school, in a remote town called Owelli with no electricity and pipe-borne water. Rita is one of 9 siblings and her parents supported the family through their peasant farming. Rita did not have access to a computer growing up, she was admitted to study Computer Science at Nnamdi Azikiwe University without having used a computer for the first time.
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Nevertheless, she graduated on top of her class with First Class Honours. Rita Orji joined the Games Institute at the University of Waterloo as a Banting Fellow in 2016. She is interested in persuasive technology and how to design technologies that can promote health and wellness and technologies for promoting social and public goods. Rita Orji joined the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University as an Assistant Professor in 2017.
She designs interactive systems and persuasive technologies particularly to benefit under-served populations. She has studied how culture and age influence the efficacy of persuasive technologies. She analyzed how reward, competition, social comparison, and social learning differ between men and women in collectivist and individualist cultures, finding that in collectivist cultures men are more susceptible to reward and competition.
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Some of her awards and recognition include 2021 Top 100 Canada’s Most Powerful Women, 2021 Top 100 Leading Nigerian Women, 2021 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Awards, 2019 International Society for Research on Internet Interventions Rising Star Award, 2018 Women Leaders in the Digital Economy Award, Digital Nova Scotia, 2017 Enugu State Award of Excellence in Recognition of Scholarly Achievement and Contributions to Advancement of Education, 2017 Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Award of Excellence in Recognition of Contribution for the Advancement of Knowledge in Computer Science. 
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