Zana Buçinca

I’m an Assistant Professor at MIT, with a shared appointment in the Sloan School of Management and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

My research interests lie primarily at the intersection of Human-AI Interaction and Future of Work. I design human-AI interaction techniques that complement people and amplify their values in AI-assisted work. To achieve this, I focus on (1) understanding how people make AI-assisted decisions and (2) designing novel interaction paradigms, explanations, and systems that optimize both task-centric outcomes, such as accuracy and efficiency, and human-centric outcomes, such as enhancing human skills and agency in AI-assisted tasks.

Prior to MIT, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft in the Office of Applied Research. I received my PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, where I was fortunate to be advised by Professor Krzysztof Gajos.

Originally, I come from the capital city of a small country in southeastern Europe - Prishtina, Kosovo.

I am unlikely to accept new PhD students for Fall 2027, but if you have independent funding and would like to work together, please reach out.

selected work

CHI

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

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

In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025

Honorable Mention Bib PDF

Best Paper Honorable Mention Award

@inproceedings{buccinca2024contrastive,
  author = {Bu{\c{c}}inca, Zana and Swaroop, Siddharth and Paluch, Amanda E and Doshi-Velez, Finale and Gajos, Krzysztof Z},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  series = {CHI '25},
  title = {Contrastive Explanations That Anticipate Human Misconceptions Can Improve Human Decision-Making Skills},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.04253},
}

TOCHI

Offline Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Support in AI-Assisted Decision-Making

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

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2026

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 = {ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction},
  title = {Offline Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Support in AI-Assisted Decision-Making},
  year = {2026},
}

arXiv

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

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

(under review) 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 = {(under review) 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

In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2021

Bib PDF Sketch credits

Many thanks to Chris Noessel at IBM for crafting and sharing this fun sketch that beautifully reflects the ideas of our paper.

@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 = {In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction},
  volume = {5},
  number = {CSCW1},
  pages = {1--21},
  year = {2021},
  notes_name = {Sketch credits},
  notes = {Many thanks to <a href="https://about.me/chrisnoessel">Chris Noessel</a> at IBM for crafting and sharing this fun sketch that beautifully reflects the ideas of our paper.},
  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},
}