Menna El-Assady

Menna El-Assady is an Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich's Department of Computer Science, leading the Interactive Visualization and Intelligence Augmentation Lab (IVIA). She works at the intersection of data analysis, visualization, computational linguistics, and explainable AI, focusing on combining machine learning with visual analytics for text data.

• Current affiliations: ETH Zurich (Department of Computer Science, AI Center)
• Previous roles: Research Fellow at ETH AI Center, Research Associate at University of Konstanz, Doctoral Student at OntarioTech University

Research Interests

El-Assady's work focuses on human-AI collaboration, particularly through:

• Interactive systems for topic model refinement and language model explainability
• Visual analytics frameworks for argumentation analysis and digital humanities
• Explainable AI solutions for medical decision support and political deliberation
• Trust calibration mechanisms in generative AI and recommender systems

Scientific Contributions

• Developed explAIner - a visual analytics framework for explainable machine learning
• Created LingVis - integrating computational linguistics with visual analytics
• Designed VALIDA and VisArgue for analyzing political debates and rhetoric
• Co-organized workshops: ArgVis, Vis4DH, VisLR, and VISxAI

Academic Recognition

• Best Paper Award: Honorable Mention (IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2018)
• 2024 VGTC Visualization Significant New Researcher Award