Elisa Nguyen

elisa.nguyen@live.de

I am passionate about researching how technology can benefit humans and society, in particular the field of responsible and trustworthy AI. I believe that AI offers a great potential to improve our lives and contribute to solving issues but the implementation must ensure fairness and transparency.

Recently, I have started my PhD studies in this direction in the Scalable Trustworthy AI group of Seong Joon Oh at the University of Tübingen, as part of the doctoral program of the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS). My research is focused on studying methods to understand a model's behavior and build models that can explain their behavior to humans.

Publications

Experience

PhD Researcher

University of Tübingen

PhD student in the Scalable Trustworthy AI group and part of IMPRS-IS. My research interests revolve around explainable and human-centered machine learning methods and models that could be used for real-world deployment. In this position, I also helped in teaching and am currently co-supervising a Master student.

May 2022 - Present

Student Research Assistant

University of Twente

Part of research team across the University of Twente and the University of Duisburg-Essen lead by Meike Nauta conducting a literature study into evaluations for XAI methods. This research resulted in a publication in ACM CSUR.

May 2021 - December 2021

IT Project Manager

Airbus

Part of the team supporting IT solutions for the CAD/DMU backbone at Airbus. In this role, I was a scrum master for a legacy retirement project and supported my colleagues and department in risk, budget, and stakeholder management. In addition, I was also a change agent for the organizational transformation to a more agile way of working.

March 2017 - September 2019

Dual Student of Computer Science and Management

Airbus

As a dual student of Computer Science & Management I switched between university and internships at the ICT department in Airbus in Hamburg. During my studies I had the opportunity to work in Toulouse, France for a month and gain first international work experience. During my studies I worked in IT project management, IT service management, IT governance departments. I was also in the IT team of the vocational training at Airbus.

August 2013 - March 2017

Education

University of Twente

Master of Science (cum laude) in Interaction Technology

Graduated with a thesis on explainability in spiking neural networks under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Christin Seifert, Dr. Gwenn Englebienne and Meike Nauta. During my studies, I also worked as a TA in NLP and Data Science.

September 2019 - December 2021

Nordakademie

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Management

Graduated with a thesis on requirements development for PLM systems in an Industry 4.0 setting under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hinrich Schröder (not published due to NDA). During my studies, I was a tutor for discrete mathematics 1 and 2.

October 2013 - March 2017

Interests

There's many things I like to do, and I was one of the people that picked up a few new hobbies during the pandemic (guilty of buying a sewing machine...) :). In the summer months, I love spending time outside hiking, reading a book somewhere or just having an ice cream with a friend. All year round, I like discovering new recipes from all around the world and attempt to recreate them in my kitchen. Recently, I've started bouldering and playing the piano again, which I enjoy very much.

Matters that are close to my heart are education, equal opportunity, and the ongoing climate crisis. I am a member of KI macht Schule whose mission it is to bring AI education to local schools in Germany, and Viva con Agua, where we raise funds for WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) projects in partner countries.

I am a very social person, so if you want to talk to me about anything, whether that be my research or favorite recipes, don't hesitate to send me a message!