Karim Benharrak
University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. Student
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
karimbenharrak@berkeley.edu
www.benharrak.com
Research Interests
I build and evaluate interactive tools that embed generative AI into how people author text, images, audio, and video. My systems let creators direct AI at the level they think about their work, preserve their own style, and draw on their creative process. Generative AI has made content creation accessible to anyone, but novices are often left with producing low-quality content, while experts use the same tools to create outstanding work. My long-term goal is to close this gap.
Education
The University of Texas at Austin
M.S. in Computer Science (enrolled in Ph.D. program, then transferred)
Advisor: Amy Pavel
San Jose State University
Semester Abroad
Work Experience
Adobe Research, Research Intern
Mentors: Valentina Shin, Mira Dontcheva
University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. Student
Advisor: Amy Pavel
Adobe Research, Research Intern
Mentors: Zeyu Jin, Bryan Wang
The University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D. Student
Advisor: Amy Pavel
Carnegie Mellon University, Research Intern
Advisors: David Lindlbauer, Dominik Moritz
University of Bayreuth, Research Assistant
Advisor: Daniel Buschek
TeamViewer, Software Engineer
Simsa, Co-Founder & CTO
B2B individualized e-learning services for construction companies
Legmon, Co-Founder & CTO
Social startup supporting underrepresented students in Germany
Peer-Reviewed Papers
CHI and UIST are the top-tier venues in Human-Computer Interaction. An asterisk (*) denotes equal contribution.
Karim Benharrak, Oriol Nieto, Bryan Wang, Zeyu Jin, Amy Pavel. “Dramarrator: Object-Based Audio Editing for Audio Drama Production from Books” UIST 2026
Tim Zindulka, Jannek Sekowski, Karim Benharrak, Daniel Buschek. “Making tools while making sense: evolving malleable writing environments by reinterpreting text across drafts, prompts, and GUI on a canvas” Human-Computer Interaction (Journal) 2026
Karim Benharrak, Amy Pavel. “HistoryPalette: Supporting Exploration and Reuse of Past Alternatives in Image Generation and Editing” CHI 2026
Karim Benharrak, Puyuan Peng, Amy Pavel. “TalkLess: Blending Extractive and Abstractive Speech Summarization for Editing Speech to Preserve Content and Style” UIST 2025
Brian Yan, Injy Hamed, Shuichiro Shimizu, Vasista Lodagala, William Chen, Olga Iakovenko, Bashar Talafha, Amir Hussein, Alexander Polok, Kalvin Chang, Dominik Klement, Sara Althubaiti, Puyuan Peng, Matthew Wiesner, Thamar Solorio, Ahmed Ali, Sanjeev Khudanpur, Shinji Watanabe, Chih-Chen Chen, Zhen Wu, Karim Benharrak, Anuj Diwan, Samuele Cornell, Eunjung Yeo, Kwanghee Choi, Carlos Carvalho, Karen Rosero. “CS-FLEURS: A Massively Multilingual and Code-Switched Speech Dataset” Interspeech 2025
Aadit Barua*, Karim Benharrak*, Meng Chen, Mina Huh, Amy Pavel. “Lotus: Creating Short Videos From Long Videos With Abstractive and Extractive Summarization” IUI 2025
Karim Benharrak, Tim Zindulka, Florian Lehmann, Hendrik Heuer, Daniel Buschek. “Writer-Defined AI Personas for On-Demand Feedback Generation” CHI 2024
Hai Dang, Karim Benharrak, Florian Lehmann, Daniel Buschek. “Beyond Text Generation: Supporting Writers with Continuous Automatic Text Summaries” UIST 2022
Workshop Papers and Posters
Karim Benharrak, Tim Zindulka, Daniel Buschek. “Deceptive Patterns of Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants” In2Writing @ CHI 2024
Karim Benharrak, Florian Lehmann, Hai Dang, Daniel Buschek. “SummaryLens - A Smartphone App for Exploring Interactive Use of Automated Text Summarization in Everyday Life” IUI 2022
Theses
Karim Benharrak. “Blending Reuse and Synthesis for Automatic Speech Editing” M.S. Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin
Karim Benharrak. “OptiPhys: Optimization-based Creation of Data Physicalizations using Everyday Objects” B.S. Thesis, University of Bayreuth
Awards and Honors
Special Recognition for Outstanding ReviewsUIST'24, CHI'25, DIS'25, CHI'26 (x2)
Dean's Research FellowCollege of Computing, Data Science, and Society @ UC Berkeley
Gary Marsden Travel AwardTravel award to attend CHI'24
German Academic Scholarship Foundation Scholarship (awarded to < 0.5%)Merit-based scholarship
Friedrich Ebert Foundation Scholarship (awarded to < 13%)Merit-based scholarship (declined)
Entrepreneurial Skills Program for High PotentialsInstitute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation Bayreuth
Bavarian State Prize (Bayerischer Landespreis)European Competition
Invited Talks
“Blending Reuse and Synthesis for Automatic Speech Editing” Adobe Research.
“Django Unchained: How a Learning Experience Platform Powered Digitalization in the Construction Industry using Django” University of Bayreuth.
“Legmon: How to Get Started? - Insights into an App Startup” University of Bayreuth.
Teaching
CS 260B: Human-Computer Interaction Research – Teaching Assistant
UC Berkeley
ADV 391K: Emotion and Persuasive Message Design – Guest Lecture
UT Austin
CS 378: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction – Teaching Assistant
UT Austin
Service
Reviewer
CHI, UIST, IUI, DIS, Mensch & Computer
Student Volunteer
ACM UIST
ACM CHI
Co-Organizer
Berkeley Institute of Design Seminar Series
Founder & Lead
Google Developer Student Club, University of Bayreuth
Co-Initiator
Instrumentheroes.de
Skills
Research Methods: HCI systems research, mixed-methods user studies, interviews, Grounded Theory
Programming: Python, TypeScript, React, CSS, Flask, Java, Swift, Android Studio, Xcode, LLM tooling
References
Amy Pavel
Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California, Berkeley
amypavel.com
Mira Dontcheva
Senior Principal Scientist
Adobe Research
research.adobe.com
Zeyu Jin
Principal Scientist
Adobe Research
research.adobe.com
Daniel Buschek
Professor of Mobile Intelligent User Interfaces
University of Bayreuth
daniel-buschek.de
David Lindlbauer
Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
davidlindlbauer.com
Dominik Moritz
Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
domoritz.de