"All Day, Every Day, Listening to Trauma," with PhD student Connie Chau, received a Best Paper Honorable Mention at ACM CHI 2025.
Maia Jacobs, PhD
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine (joint appointment) · Northwestern University
Research focus
Human-AI Interaction
High-Stakes Decision-Making
Trust & Explainability
Clinical AI
Human-Centered Design
Community Based Participatory Design
About
I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University, where I direct the NU-PATH Lab. I am also a core faculty member of Northwestern's Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies, and Center for Human-Computer Interaction+Design.
I study how predictive models shape high-stakes decision-making, and design intelligent tools that promote collaboration and autonomy within these environments, implementing and evaluating these tools in real-world settings. Current projects include:
- Studying how recommendations shape collaboration and power dynamics in clinical decisions
- Using community-based participatory research (CBPR) to build AI tools with and for communities
- Designing tools that adapt to a person's changing needs over time
Much of this work is grounded in clinical and health settings, where AI adoption is outpacing research about its real-world effects, often creating invisible labor for the clinicians and patients who have to interpret, question, or correct what a system tells them.
I earned my PhD in Human-Centered Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society before joining Northwestern in 2021.
News
Invited talk, "Designing Human-Centered ML for Collaborative Medical Decision Making," Nokia Bell Labs Responsible AI Seminar Series.
Invited talk, "Designing Human-Centered ML for Collaborative Medical Decision Making," HCI in Healthcare Course, University of Copenhagen.
Invited talk, "AI in Healthcare: Key Human-Computer Interaction Challenges," Dagstuhl Seminar on From Research to Certification with Data-Driven Medical Decision Support Systems.
Awarded an NIMH ALACRITY center seed grant for A Mixed-Method Study to Address Algorithmic Fairness in Mental Health Risk Calculators.
Named a Searle Fellow at Northwestern University.
Lab news: Connie Chau was named a Google PhD Fellow and MIT Rising Star in EECS; Hannah Studd successfully defended her dissertation.