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The Latest News and Insights from HAL
"Designing AI for Human Growth" presented at the AI for Society Panel Series
The spring 2026 series opens with a panel featuring campus experts including HAL Co-Director Ahmed Abbasi. The series reimagines the responsible use of AI beyond risk and restraint, focusing instead on how technology can cultivate collective potential and societal well-being. The opening panel sets the foundation for the series by asking: How can AI be built to cultivate, rather than displace, human capacities such as learning, empathy, and creativity?
Notre Dame announces strategic framework working groups
The Data, AI, and Computing Initiative funds faculty-led, interdisciplinary working groups to support university research pillars, with HAL faculty leading several groups. Topics include "Digital Experimentation for Inference and Causal Modeling" and "A Sociotechnical Perspective on Auditing AI," among others.
HAL Co-Director recognized among the world's top 2% most-cited scientists
Ken Kelley was recently recognized among the Stanford/Elsevier global Top 2% Scientists. The recognition emphasizes both career-long and single-year performance to indicate significant scientific impact. Inclusion on the global list is recognition of a researcher’s thought leadership in his or her field.
HAL affiliate professor John Lalor awarded INFORMS Design Science Award at Workshop Information Technologies and Systems (WITS) Conference
John Lalor, with his colleague Pedro Rodriguez (Meta), received the INFORMS Design Science Award for their work on applying Item Response Theory to machine learning benchmarking and dataset analysis. The award recognizes "research efforts that use an experimental research approach – building and evaluating working IT systems or creating IT artifacts, as a vehicle for generating design science methods, principles, practice guidelines, insights, and lessons learned."
HAL Co-Director named a 2025 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Distinguished Member
ACM, the world's leading computing society, honors Ahmed Abbasi among the 2025 Distinguished Members. Distinguished Members are selected by their peers for significant achievements driving the future of computing.
HAL Co-Director awarded prestigious INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award
Ahmed Abbasi, Joe and Jane Giovanini Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations at the University of Notre Dame, was awarded the prestigious INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award on October 28 during the organization’s annual conference. The award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline through publications, intellectual leadership as reflected in editorial appointments and intellectual stewardship in the form of mentoring doctoral students and young researchers. INFORMS is the largest professional association for the decision and data sciences.
HAL Co-Director named to All-Faculty Team
Notre Dame has a long history of outstanding student-athletes being named to All-America teams. The University also has a tradition of honoring exceptional faculty on the football field each fall. At every home game, the provost honors a distinguished member of the faculty as part of the All-Faculty Team. These seven scholar-teachers have been chosen from across the disciplines for their transformative contributions to Notre Dame and beyond. How do people respond to warnings or reminders and why do they sometimes ignore them? Ahmed Abbasi, Joe and Jane Giovanini Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, explores how AI can better understand human behavior to design more effective interventions. His research shows that tailored AI-guided messages can significantly reduce phishing risks and improve patient care outcomes.
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