Muhammad Bilal Zafar

Professor Muhammad Bilal Zafar holds the Chair of AI and Society within the Department of Computer Science at Ruhr University Bochum. He maintains key affiliations with the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security, Cluster of Excellence CASA (as Principal Investigator), and the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security.

His research program centers on human-centric artificial intelligence with core expertise in:

• Fairness algorithms for bias mitigation
• Explainable AI systems
• Robustness testing in human-AI interaction
• Trustworthy machine learning deployment

Professor Zafar develops technical solutions addressing challenges that emerge when AI models interact with human users across various application domains.

Prior to his academic appointment, he gained significant industry experience as Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Berlin and Research Scientist at Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence in Renningen. His educational foundation includes a PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) and Saarland University under the supervision of Krishna P. Gummadi and Manuel Gomez Rodriguez.

He leads the AI and Society research team at Ruhr University Bochum, which investigates the societal implications of artificial intelligence while developing concrete technical approaches for responsible AI development. Prospective researchers can find current opportunities through the team's dedicated information page.