Zana Buçinca

Hi there! I’m a PhD Candidate at Harvard, where I’m fortunate to be advised by Professor Krzysztof Gajos. I also collaborate closely with Professor Finale Doshi-Velez.

My research interests lie primarily at the intersection of HCI and Responsible AI. I design, build, and evaluate AI-powered systems for decision-making support.

Over the course of my PhD, I spent two wonderful summers interning at Microsoft Research, where I was hosted by Dr. Saleema Amershi & Dr. Alexandra Olteanu in 2021 and Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan & Dr. Alexandra Chouldechova in 2022.

My research has been supported by an IBM PhD Fellowship and a Siebel Scholarship.

Prior to joining the Intelligent Interactive Systems group at Harvard as a PhD student, I obtained a master’s degree in Computer Science from Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Izmir Institute of Technology in Izmir, Turkey.

I was born and raised in the capital city of a small country in southeastern Europe - Prishtina, Kosovo.

selected work

arXiv

Contrastive Explanations That Anticipate Human Misconceptions Can Improve Human Decision-Making Skills

Zana Buçinca, Siddharth Swaroop, Amanda E Paluch, and 2 more authors

arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.04253, 2024

Bib PDF

@article{buccinca2024contrastive,
  author = {Bu{\c{c}}inca, Zana and Swaroop, Siddharth and Paluch, Amanda E and Doshi-Velez, Finale and Gajos, Krzysztof Z},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.04253},
  title = {Contrastive Explanations That Anticipate Human Misconceptions Can Improve Human Decision-Making Skills},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.04253},
}

arXiv

Towards Optimizing Human-Centric Objectives in AI-Assisted Decision-Making With Offline Reinforcement Learning

Zana Buçinca, Siddharth Swaroop, Amanda E Paluch, and 2 more authors

arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.05911, 2024

Bib PDF

@article{buccinca2024towards,
  author = {Bu{\c{c}}inca, Zana and Swaroop, Siddharth and Paluch, Amanda E and Murphy, Susan A and Gajos, Krzysztof Z},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.05911},
  title = {Towards Optimizing Human-Centric Objectives in AI-Assisted Decision-Making With Offline Reinforcement Learning},
  year = {2024},
}

arXiv

AHA!: Facilitating AI Impact Assessment by Generating Examples of Harms

Zana Buçinca, Chau Minh Pham, Maurice Jakesch, and 3 more authors

arXiv e-prints, 2023

Bib PDF

@article{bucinca2023aha,
  title = {AHA!: Facilitating AI Impact Assessment by Generating Examples of Harms},
  author = {Bu{\c{c}}inca, Zana and Pham, Chau Minh and Jakesch, Maurice and Tulio Ribeiro, Marco and Olteanu, Alexandra and Amershi, Saleema},
  journal = {arXiv e-prints},
  pages = {arXiv--2306},
  year = {2023},
}

CSCW

To trust or to think: cognitive forcing functions can reduce overreliance on AI in AI-assisted decision-making

Zana Buçinca, Maja Barbara Malaya, and Krzysztof Z Gajos

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-computer Interaction, 2021

Bib PDF

@article{buccinca2021trust,
  title = {To trust or to think: cognitive forcing functions can reduce overreliance on AI in AI-assisted decision-making},
  author = {Bu{\c{c}}inca, Zana and Malaya, Maja Barbara and Gajos, Krzysztof Z},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Human-computer Interaction},
  volume = {5},
  number = {CSCW1},
  pages = {1--21},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {ACM New York, NY, USA},
}

IUI

Proxy Tasks and Subjective Measures Can Be Misleading in Evaluating Explainable AI Systems

Zana Buçinca, Phoebe Lin, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, 2020

Best Paper Award Bib PDF

Best Paper Award

@inproceedings{bucinca20:proxy,
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  author = {Bu\c{c}inca, Zana and Lin, Phoebe and Gajos, Krzysztof Z. and Glassman, Elena L.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces},
  publisher = {ACM},
  pubtype = {conference},
  series = {IUI '20},
  title = {Proxy Tasks and Subjective Measures Can Be Misleading in Evaluating Explainable AI Systems},
  year = {2020},
  dimensions = {true},
}