Abdallah El Ali

Hi! My name is Abdallah (or Abdo for short). I am a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher with a background in Cognitive Science. I am a (tenured) research scientist at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), within the Distributed & Interactive Systems (DIS) group. I am also on the executive board (adjunct treasurer) for CHI Nederland (CHI NL), where I handle events, web, and social comms.

I lead research efforts within the area of Affective Interactive Systems (AIS). 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.

My research combines advances in Human-Computer Interaction, eXtended Reality, and Artificial Intelligence to measure, infer, and augment human cognitive, affective, and social interactions. Focus areas:

  • Data Acquisition: Systems for acquiring affective and behavioral data and labels across real and virtual environments
  • Machine Intelligence: Systems that can sense, recognize, and react to our affective and behavioral states
  • Augmentation: Systems that can enhance or modify our physical / virtual bodies and sensory perception across human-machine and human-human interactions

M.Sc. student at a Dutch university interested in HCI, AI, and/or IxD? Contact me.


NEWS

   - Will serve as CHI '25' Video Showcase Co-chair
   - Attended Dagstuhl seminar on protecting against cognitive vulnerabilities in social engineering
   - Will serve as MUM '24 Workshops Co-chair
   - Gave talk on "Affective Augmentation Systems" at Cyber-physical Technologies for Affective Wellbeing workshop
   - Will serve as ICMI '24 LBW Co-chair
   - Gave talk on "Affective Interactive Systems" part of CWI-INRIA research collaboration
   - Will serve as CHIWORK '24 Conversations Co-chair
   - ISMAR '23 Journal paper cond. accepted on cardiac interoception in VR
   - AutoUI '23 paper cond. accepted on affective driver-pedestrian interaction during actual driving
   - IJHCI paper accepted on video to simulator for affective driver-pedestrian interaction
   - CHIWORK 2023 workshop on hybrid was a success!
   - DIS 2023 workshop accepted on designing with biosignals in HCI. Submissions by June 1 (AoE)!
   - Paper on group synchrony metrics and physiological emotion recognition accepted at IEEE TAFFC
   - Will serve as SIG Co-Chair for CHI 2024