PhD Candidate · Zurich, Switzerland

ibrahim al hazwani

Bridging Explanatory AI with Data Humanism to create the next generation of user interfaces and user experiences for recommender systems.

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About

Half tarallo, half hummus. Multidisciplinary and product-oriented by nature — into design, flowers, and pop culture. I believe empathy and kindness comes first, whether in research, teaching, supervision, or in life.

Through my research, I develop new user interfaces and user experiences that transform complex algorithmic processes into contextually relevant, emotionally resonant experiences with the goal of enabling non-expert users to engage with their own data and understand AI-driven recommendations.

Recommender Systems Explanatory AI Data Humanism Information Visualization Human-AI Interaction
1000+ Hours talking about the Nordics
8 Cities Lived In
108,977 Minutes of music played in 2025
Artemis II Current obsseession

Education

2026
PhD in Computer Science University of Zurich, Switzerland Thesis: Humanizing recommender systems
2021
MSc Computational Data Science Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
2019
BSc Biomedical Engineering University of Bologna, Italy

Research

Selected Publications

Google Scholar ↗
2026 ACM CHI

A Critical Reflection on the Values and Assumptions in Data Visualization

Shehryar Saharan, Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Miriah Meyer, Laura Garrison

2025 ACM RecSys

PRISM: From Individual Preferences to Group Consensus through Conversational AI-Mediated and Visual Explanations

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Oliver Aschwanden, Oana Inel, Jürgen Bernard, Ludovico Boratto

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2025 ACM RecSys

HUMMUS: A Human-Centered Approach to Sequential Recommendation Explainability through Data Humanism

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Matthias Mylaeus, Daniela Mormocea, Jürgen Bernard, Lorenzo Porcaro

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2025 IEEE VIS

Data Humanism Decoded: A Characterization of its Principles to Bridge Data Visualization Researchers and Practitioners

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Ke Er Zhang, Laura Garrison, Jürgen Bernard

2025 ACM CHItaly 🏆 Best Pictorial

Blooming Beats: An Interactive Explainable Recommender System for Exploring Personal Music Narratives through Data Humanism Principles

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Oliver Aschwanden, Daniel Lutziger, Carlos Kirchdorfer, Luca Huber, Nimra Ahmed, Anton Fedosov, Jürgen Bernard

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2025 IJHCS

f-RecX: A Framework for Designing Effective Textual Explanations in Recommender Systems' User Interfaces

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Gabriela Morgenshtern, Mennatallah El-Assady, Jürgen Bernard

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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2024 NordiCHI

Towards Personal Explanations for Recommender Systems: A Study on the Impact of Familiarity and Urgency

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Nimra Ahmed, Mennatallah El-Assady, Jürgen Bernard

2024 ACM UMAP

ScrollyPOI: A Narrative-Driven Interactive Recommender System for Points-of-Interest Exploration and Explainability

Ibrahim Al-Hazwani, Tiantian Luo, Oana Inel, Francesco Ricci, Mennatallah El-Assady, Jürgen Bernard

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Experience

Work & Teaching

Work Experience

Feb 2022 – Present

Research Assistant

University of Zurich, Switzerland

  • Led hands-on workshops collecting data on recommender system usage patterns
  • Designed and executed online experiments on explainable recommender systems
  • Mentoring students on semester projects and master's theses
Feb – July 2021

Data Scientist (Master's Thesis)

The LEGO Group, Remote

  • NLP pipeline analyzing 100K+ comments with 3-class sentiment classifier
  • Interactive visualization for sentence-level sentiment analysis using Plotly
May – Sept 2019

Data Engineer Intern

Humanitas Research Hospital, Italy

  • Built 30 reports and 5 dashboards with SAP BO and Tableau
  • Developed 1TB+ data warehouse with SAP BO
Sept 2017 – June 2018

UI/UX Developer

Apple Developer Academy, Naples, Italy

  • Designed iOS apps using Challenge-Based Learning methodology
  • Employed A/B testing to optimize user interface strategies

Teaching Experience

Interactive Visual Data Analysis UZH · 2022–2025
Human-Computer Interaction in AI UZH · 2023, 2025
Interactive Machine Learning ETH Zürich · 2023, 2024
Fundamentals of Web Engineering ETH Zürich · 2023, 2024
Fundamentals of People Oriented Computing UZH · 2023

Invited Talks

2025

Explainable AI — UZH HCI in AI Course (Guest Lecture)

2024

In a world of AI be human — Swiss Pint of Science

2024

Humane Interactive Explainable AI — UZH Social Computing Group

2022

The role of XAI in supporting users — UZH Oerlikon Lecture Series

Service & Reviewing

ACM CHI 2025 IEEE VIS 2023–24 ACM DIS 2025 ACM IUI 2026 Eurographics 2023–24 VINCI 2025

Curriculum Vitae

Skills & Tools

Python SQL JavaScript D3.js Svelte HTML / CSS Git Figma Adobe Illustrator Adobe InDesign Claude Code
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