Abdallah El Ali is an HCI researcher and tenured research scientist at CWI who also serves as a part-time Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, specializing in affective interactive systems and trustworthy human-AI interaction. With a PhD in Computer Science and a background in Cognitive Science, he blends sensing, XR, and AI to augment cognitive, affective, and social interactions while using the EU AI Act to guide transparent AI for media and democracy. He leads Human-AI Interaction at the AI, Media, and Democracy Lab and reinstated the Dutch SIGCHI chapter, reflecting a commitment to both research and community building. His decade-plus career spans academic posts, international fellowships, and industry UX roles, giving him a rare mix of rigorous empirical methods and practical design mentoring for startups. He has a track record of supervising students, coordinating European research proposals, and running field studies from mobile users in developing contexts to large-scale social media analyses. Beyond academia, he writes and mentors across disciplines—an HCI scholar who still thinks like a storyteller and designer.
10 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Msc., Cognitive Science, Msc., Cognitive Science at University of Amsterdam
B.A., English Language, B.A., English Language at American University of Beirut
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Abdallah El Ali - Assistant Professor at Utrecht University