Muhammad Bilal Zafar

Professor Muhammad Bilal Zafar holds a faculty position at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), where he heads the Chair of AI and Society within the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security. He is also a Principal Investigator (PI) at the Cluster of Excellence CASA and a member of the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security. Previously, he worked as a Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services and a Research Scientist at Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence. He completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) and Saarland University, advised by Krishna P. Gummadi and Manuel Gomez Rodriguez.

His research focuses on human-centric AI/ML, emphasizing fairness, explainability, and robustness of AI systems. Key contributions include mechanisms for fair classification, bias detection in algorithms, and trustworthy AI applications. He actively engages in mentoring PhD and Master’s students, with current openings for candidates in Computer Science, Mathematics, and related fields. His work bridges theoretical advancements with practical solutions for ethical AI deployment.

Notable collaborations include projects with AWS and Bosch, addressing challenges in algorithmic fairness and AI transparency. His publications span top venues like ACL, KDD, NeurIPS, and WWW, highlighting contributions to both foundational and applied aspects of AI ethics.