Nimisha Karnatak

Nimisha Karnatak

Doctoral Student

E: nimisha.karnatak@some.ox.ac.uk

E: nimishakarnatak12@gmail.com

Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QD

Themes:

Biography

Nimisha Karnatak is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Oxford, supervised by Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Professor Max Van Kleek. Her research lies at the intersection of Human–Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence, focusing on the design of trustworthy generative AI systems that support appropriate reliance and equitable access to knowledge in high-stakes real-world settings.

Alongside her doctoral studies, Nimisha is currently working as a AI Research Intern with The World Bank in Washington, D.C., USA, where she is operationalizing applications of human-centered AI in global development programs. In 2024, she served as a Student Researcher at Google DeepMind in London, where she developed a generative AI system to support small business owners with limited design expertise in creating brand-aligned content, advancing more inclusive access to AI technologies.

Prior to her D.Phil., Nimisha worked full-time for two years as a Research Fellow at Microsoft Research India, leading field-based studies in low-resource healthcare settings to investigate the sociotechnical dimensions of technology adoption and trust. Her work has been published as first-author papers at premier venues including ACM CSCW, ACM TOCHI, ACM CHI, and AAAI. Across these efforts, she explores how AI systems can be better aligned with users’ situated practices, goals, and everyday environments.

Publications

N. Karnatak, M. Chatila, D. Pinzon, R. Yazdanfar, M. Dugas, R. Vakis. Learning from AVA: Early Lessons from a Curated and Trustworthy Generative AI for Policy and Development Research. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026)
DOI
N. Karnatak, A. F. Baranes, R. Marchant, H. Zeng, T. Butler, and K. Olson (2025). Expanding the Generative AI Design Space through Structured Prompting and Multimodal Interfaces. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025), Workshop on Designing and Developing User Interfaces with AI.
DOI | Project Website
N. Karnatak, A. F. Baranes, R. Marchant, T. Butler, and K. Olson. ACAI for SBOs: AI Co-Creation for Advertising and Inspiration for Small Business Owners. DeepMind Preprint.
DOI | Project Website
N. Karnatak, M. Van Kleek, and N. Shadbolt (2024). Generative AI as Collaborative Technology for ASHA Workers in Marginalized Communities. Collaborative AI and Modeling of Humans Bridge, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2024).
DOI
N. Karnatak, B. Loughrin, T. A. Kuo, O. Mateu-Silvernail, I. Medhi Thies, B. Thies, and M. Jain. “Is it even giving the correct reading or not?”: How Trust and Relationships Mediate Blood Pressure Management in India. ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (TOCHI).
Presented at ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024).
DOI
N. Karnatak*, M. Gupta*, and M. Jain (2024). Understanding the Technology-Mediated Home Phlebotomy Ecosystem in India. ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2024).
DOI

*Equal authorship.

Research Interest

Human-Centered AI, AI Safety, Responsible and Trustworthy AI, Reliance on AI, Appropriateness in AI, AI Ethics, Human-Computer Interaction

Affiliations

Active affiliations

PhD Student, Human-Centered Computing Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford
AI Research Intern, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., USA

Former affiliations:
Student Researcher, Google DeepMind, London, UK
Research Fellow, Microsoft Research India, Bengaluru, India
Research Assistant, International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland
Research Intern, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Dehradun, India
Research Intern, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT-R), India
Research Intern, Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, India