
Computer Science Seminar: Rafal Kocielnik (California Institute of Technology)
Speaker: Rafal Kocielnik (California Institute of Technology)
Title: Human-Centered AI: From Clinical Education Support to Enabling End-user Inspection of AI
The seminar will be available for in-person and Zoom participation. To participate online, please email inquiry-cs@barnard.edu to receive the Zoom link.
Rafał Kocielnik is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Caltech’s Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, focusing on Human-Centered AI. His work is distinguished by a strong commitment to mentorship, preparing undergraduate students for impactful careers in both industry and academia. His educational background—an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Poland, a PDEng in Industrial Design from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and a Ph.D. in Human-Centered Design & Engineering from the University of Washington, USA—equips him to address multidisciplinary challenges around AI. During his Ph.D., he focused on designing engaging conversational interactions for reflection and behavior change. His research at Caltech, which earned him a CRA Computing Innovation Fellowship in 2020, includes AI for surgical training, addressing social bias in generative AI, and mitigating toxicity in social media. Rafał has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers and collaborated with industry leaders such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Activision, as well as nonprofits like Wikipedia and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His contributions have been recognized with best paper awards at major HCI and applied ML venues such as CSCW, Conversational User Interfaces (CUI), and Machine Learning for Health (ML4H), and his work has also appeared in prestigious journals including Nature Digital Medicine and JAMA. This track record underscores his commitment to interdisciplinary research, mentorship, and advancing AI with a human-centered approach.