Abdallah El Ali

Abdallah "Abdo" El Ali

Research Scientist, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
Assistant Professor (part-time), Utrecht University

HCI researcher working on affective systems and human-AI interaction. Chair of CHI Nederland (CHI NL).

CHI NL
Google Scholar ACM Digital Library DBLP ORCID ResearchGate

RESEARCH

  • Human Augmentation and Affective Systems I envision and develop systems that augment our physical / virtual bodies and sensory perception across human-machine and human-human interactions, with a focus on affective haptics and interaction techniques that leverage physiological signals.
  • Trustworthy Human-AI Interaction Despite all the benefits AI brings, the surge in fake media poses serious threats to a well functioning democratic society. I lead research efforts in developing more trustworthy and transparent AI systems, with a focus on AI system disclosures and better AI attribution mechanisms.
→ Check the Students page for master's thesis topics.

Currently: I am a (tenured) research scientist at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), within the Distributed & Interactive Systems (DIS) group. I am also an Assistant Professor (part-time) at Utrecht University, within the Multimedia group. At CWI DIS, I lead the research areas on Affective Interactive Systems and Trustworthy Human-AI Interaction. I am also affiliated with the AI, Media, and Democracy Lab, where I lead Human-AI Interaction research focusing on AI transparency in media. I am also currently Chair of CHI Nederland (CHI NL), the local Dutch SIGCHI chapter which we reinstated in August, 2020.

Previously: I did my Postdoc at the HCI Oldenburg lab, part of the Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems group at the University of Oldenburg / OFFIS (Germany). I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), working at the (former) Information and Language Processing Systems (ILPS) group. I recieved my master's degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Amsterdam.

NEWS

May 2025 Will serve as CHI '27 Workshops Co-chair
May 2025 Will serve as MobileHCI '27 Technical Program Chair
Apr 2026 CHI NL @ CHI 2026: Contributions from Dutch HCI blog post out
Apr 2026 ACL '26 paper on LLMs exhibiting biases to human and AI labels accepted (main conference)
Apr 2026 CHIWORK '26 paper on understanding vibe coding perceptions in product design cond. accepted
See all news →

INVITED TALKS

Jun 2026 Human-Centric AI Disclosures: Limits, Biases, and Design Beyond LabelsUPCOMING Seminar · KTH · Stockholm
Sept 2025 Human-centric AI System Disclosures for Transparent and Trustworthy Human-AI Interaction Seminar · CSIRO Data61 · Online
Apr 2025 Affective Haptics for Human Augmentation: Opportunities and Risks Seminar · Nagoya University · Nagoya
Apr 2025 Human-centered AI System Disclosures for Transparent and Trustworthy Human-AI Interaction Colloquium · NAIST · Nara
Mar 2025 Human-centered AI System Disclosures for Transparent and Trustworthy Human-AI Interaction Seminar · LMU · Munich