Srishti Palani

About

Srishti Palani is a Senior Research Scientist at Tableau Research, Salesforce, where she studies, builds, and evaluates how to make AI systems more interpretable, trustworthy, and aligned with human needs. Her research bridges mechanistic understanding of AI systems with empirical studies of how people actually interact with them in practice. Specifically, investigating human-AI interaction as a set of productive tensions to surface and design for, such as: How do we balance model evaluation at scale against user-centered evaluation methods? What is the right balance between AI automation and user agency? How to optimize performance beyond single interactions, to also consider end-to-end individual and collaborative workflows?

She regularly publishes her research at top-tier HCI and AI venues conferences. Check out a full list of publications here. Her research has been recognized with best paper awards and honors such as Google PhD Research Fellowship, Phi Beta Kappa Prize, and CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. She has collaborated with top research labs such as Microsoft Research, Autodesk Research, and the Allen Institute for AI. Beyond publications and patents, her work also directly informs product roadmaps; most recently, with features announced at the Tableau Keynote at Dreamforce 2025.

She received her PhD and Master’s from University of California, San Diego, and graduated Bachelor’s summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College.

Intresseområden

• Human-Centered AI
• Human-AI Interaction
• Cognitive Science
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work
• Social Computing