Jürgen Ziegler is a Senior Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science within the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He leads the Interactive Intelligent Systems Group, focusing on human-computer interaction, recommender systems, and explainable AI. His work emphasizes transparency, user control, and interdisciplinary collaboration with industry partners. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Stuttgart, specializing in formal user interface design methodology. Prior to his current role, he headed the Competence Center for Software Technology and Interactive Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO) in Stuttgart. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal i-com - Journal of Interactive Media from 2001 to 2021. Ziegler’s research bridges academic and industrial domains, with applications in e-commerce, health, social media, and automotive systems. He investigates how to make intelligent technologies more transparent and user-controllable, particularly in conversational recommender systems, personalized interfaces, and social media analytics. His work integrates visualization techniques and semantic data models to enhance user experience. His recent publications focus on multistakeholder evaluation frameworks, explainable AI, and the integration of conversational agents with traditional interfaces. These studies explore domains like health promotion, smart environments, and education, using methods such as knowledge graphs, generative AI, and interactive sliders for feature dependency visualization. Ziegler founded and co-chairs the German Special Interest Group on User-Centred Artificial Intelligence. He has contributed to funded projects like SPIDER, FairWays, and PAnalytics, which address polarization in social networks, interactive recommendation, and health support systems. His leadership roles include organizing international workshops on explainable user models and user-centered AI. He supervises PhD students and advises on projects related to recommender systems, mental models, and user interaction preferences. His team collaborates on multi-method approaches for transparent decision support and the development of tools for measuring user perception of recommendation transparency. Labs and teams under his direction include the Interactive Intelligent Systems Group, which develops demonstrators like AR-based shopping advisors and hybrid recommendation frameworks. His work emphasizes both theoretical advancements and practical implementations across diverse application scenarios.





