Pradeep Murukannaiah

Pradeep Murukannaiah is an Associate Professor in the Interactive Intelligence group at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (EEMCS) at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). He co-directs the Hippo Lab, a Delft AI lab focused on AI for fair, efficient, and interpretable analysis of climate policies. He also holds leadership roles as Use Cases Coordinator and Diversity Co-Chair in the Hybrid Intelligence center, and serves as Master Coordinator for the MSc in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Technology (DSAIT).

Dr. Murukannaiah received his PhD in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2016. Prior to joining TU Delft, he served as an Assistant Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology (2017-2019), completed an internship at Google, and worked as a Software Engineer at Alcatel-Lucent.

His research centers on engineering socially intelligent agents through three interconnected thrusts: Natural Language Processing (focusing on argument mining, value alignment, and claim analysis), Multi-Agent Systems (exploring negotiation, social choice, and multi-objective reinforcement learning), and Hybrid Intelligence (developing frameworks for human-AI synergy in decision making). Cross-cutting these areas are his investigations into values (representing what matters to stakeholders) and norms (representing expectations between stakeholders), which together form sociotechnical systems where humans interact, make decisions, and stay accountable to each other while AI agents augment human intelligence.

His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on value-sensitive AI systems, with work spanning moral frame preservation in news summarization, multi-objective reinforcement learning for climate policy analysis, and mechanisms for responsible autonomy. His research consistently bridges theoretical advances in AI with practical applications in societal decision making, particularly around climate change and democratic processes.

Dr. Murukannaiah has successfully mentored numerous graduate students, including current PhD candidates Zuzanna Osika (working on explainable multi-objective decision support), Shubhalaxmi Mukherjee (focusing on fact checking using LLMs), and several recent PhD graduates whose work has contributed to the fields of opinion diversity through hybrid intelligence and context-specific value inference.

As co-director of the Hippo Lab and through his leadership roles in the Hybrid Intelligence center, he actively shapes research directions that emphasize fairness, interpretability, and human-centered AI approaches for addressing complex societal challenges.