Human-centered artificial intelligence; Social Computing; Human-computer interaction; Responsible artificial intelligence

My research currently focuses on human-centered artificial intelligence. I am now a principal researcher at the CENIA Basal Center (National Center of Artificial Intelligence). I study the intersection between people and artificial intelligence. On the one hand, I study how citizens conceptualize, understand, and interact with AI. On the other hand, I explore ways AI developers can incorporate ethical aspects into the development process. I also served as a principal investigator in the Millennium Nucleus Futures of Artificial Intelligence and its socio-cultural implications in Chile and Latin America from 2022 until its end in 2025.

Previously, my work centered on the design and empirical evaluation of social technologies and their implications for citizens. During my doctoral work, I undertook a mixed-methods investigation of e-democracy.org, one of the oldest and still-active web platforms that encourage and support citizen discussion about local politics in the USA. I conducted digital trace analysis, manual and automatic content classification, social network analysis, surveys, and interviews to assess the influence of online and offline factors on the sustainability of e-democracy online groups over time. Since then, I have combined quantitative and qualitative research methods to address questions about system design and people's involvement in technological platforms.

My scientific production includes 15 WOS articles and a co-authored book. Scopus has indexed an additional 54 of my conference papers. During my ten years at UTFSM, seven graduate and 38 undergraduate students have graduated under my supervision. I have been a committee member for 19 graduate theses and 17 undergraduate exams. I regularly serve as a reviewer for Fondef, Becas Chile, six international conferences, and two international journals. I am also active in the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) research network in Latin America. I serve on the Steering Committee of the Women in Computing Event in Chile. I also participate in several public outreach activities discussing AI's implications for people, including AI ethics and biases.

More info at: https://claudialopezmoncada.com

Product 1: Dash-AI: a no-code machine learning platform for data science.
https://www.dash-ai.com/
DashAI is an open-source, no-code machine learning platform for AI experimentation, led by Felipe Bravo from the Universidad de Chile, with me as co-lead. The platform allows users to integrate, experiment with, and visualize AI model results through an intuitive visual interface, covering the full ML pipeline from data exploration and cleaning to model training, results comparison, and explainability. The project is backed by Fondef IDEA funding with the support of CENIA (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial).

DashAI is available completely free and open source, with a core mission to democratize access to AI development, making machine learning accessible to researchers, students, and practitioners without requiring programming expertise. Beyond accessibility, DashAI also champions technological sovereignty: because the platform runs locally on users' own machines, giving individuals and organizations full control over their information.

Product 2: Algorithmic transparency in public services
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2026.103769
This is another core area of my research, focused on how citizens understand, experience, and should be informed about algorithmic systems used by the state. This work explores how people in the Global South interact with algorithm-mediated public services, uncovering folk theories, trust dynamics, and coping strategies that users develop as they navigate these systems.

A central contribution of this research is a three-layered transparency framework for communicating algorithmic systems in the public sector, developed through participatory prototype design with end users. This framework offers a practical and human-centered approach to making government algorithms legible and accountable to the people they affect, with direct potential to inform public policy on algorithmic transparency. This body of work was funded by the Millennium Nucleus FAIR, where I served as Principal Investigator, and has been published in leading venues including the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. This research agenda will continue thanks to a newly awarded Fondecyt Regular grant, ensuring its growth and impact in the years ahead.

Product 3: User Experience Laboratory (LabUX) at UTFSM
https://labux.inf.utfsm.cl/
I co-funded the LabUX at UTFSM. This space was built thanks to a partnership between Scotiabank and UTFSM. The collaboration aimed to strengthen Informatics Engineering students’ education to build safe, human-centered information systems. The main pillars of this collaboration were artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and human-centered software development. I was co-leading the latter. We built the user experience (UX) laboratory (LabUX) in Valparaíso, which was later replicated in Santiago through this partnership. These labs are physical spaces dedicated to designing, exploring, and assessing the impact of information technology design on users. We rely on technology to record and analyze users’ interactions and to train our students in human-centered techniques.

This project was essential as it is a large-scale, ambitious effort to explore closer collaboration between academia and an actor in the national industry. My role will be to continue working with LabUX to support human-centered design and AI evaluation. The UX facilities are available for the Center's projects through collaborations already established.