Laura Koesten

Before joining MBZUAI, Professor Koesten was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna (Faculty of Computer Science) where she remains affiliated; and a senior researcher at King’s College London, UK. She is the Principal Investigator of the WWTF Digital Humanism project Talking Charts at the University of Vienna and the recipient of the 2024 Hedy Lamarr Prize awarded by the City of Vienna, Austria.

She earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southampton, UK, in collaboration with the Open Data Institute, London, UK. Her research topics include: Human-Computer Interaction; Human-Data Interaction; Sensemaking with Data and Visualizations, Data Discovery and Reuse; Ethical and collaborative aspects of data-centric work, as well as Explainable AI. Most recently, her work received an Honourable Mention Award at ACM CHI 2025.

• Postdoc, Visualization & Data Analysis Research Group, University of Vienna, Austria
• Postdoc (Senior Research Fellow) at King’s College London, UK
• Ph.D. from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), University of Southampton, UK
• MSc, Design School, Loughborough University, UK

• Honorable mention at ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2025 (DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3713520)
• 2024 Hedy Lamarr price of the city of Vienna, Digital City, Wien
• Keynote speaker at two workshops at BTW25, Conference on Database Systems for Business, Technology, and Web (Big and Small Data in Science and Humanities, and Data Engineering for Data Science)
• Invited speaker at the Data Excellence Community meeting of the City of Vienna
• Invited speaker in the lecture series Foundation and Methods of Digital Humanism, fall semester 2024, University of Vienna
• Invited speaker and facilitator of the workshop Human‑Centered Data Discovery at the Data Curation Network (DCN) All Hands Meeting, Duke University, US; 2024

Professor Koesten’s research focuses on improving human-data interaction by exploring how people make sense of data and visualizations, how data is discovered and reused, and the ethical and collaborative dimensions of data-centric work. She aims to develop better ways to explain data and models to diverse audiences and to design tools that support these efforts. She co-authored 11 journal papers and 12 full conference papers. Her work has been cited 1030 times (June 2025, Google Scholar).

• Synthesis lecture on Human-Centered Data Discovery. Gregory, K. & Koesten, L. In: Springer Nature. (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18223-5
• Encountering Friction, Understanding Crises: How Do Digital Natives Make Sense of Crisis Maps?. Laura Koesten; Antonia Saske; Sandra Starchenko; Kathleen Gregory. Accepted for publication at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025. DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3713520
• The Gulf of Interpretation: From Chart to Message and Back Again. Christian Knoll; Torsten Möller; Kathleen Gregory; Laura Koesten. Accepted for publication at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025. DOI 10.1145/3706598.3713413
• Information That Matters: Exploring Information Needs of People Affected by Algorithmic Decisions. Timothée Schmude; Laura Koesten; Torsten Möller; Sebastian Tschiatschek. International Journal for Human Computer Studies, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103380
• "Being simple on complex issues'' – An expert view on visual data communication of climate change. Regina Schuster, Kathleen Gregory, Torsten Möller, Laura Koesten. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2024. DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2024.33522
• Koesten, Laura, et al. "Talking datasets–understanding data sense-making behaviour." International journal of human-computer studies 146 (2021): 102562. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102562