New Faculty Affiliates Welcomed to the Hariri Institute

The Hariri Institute is pleased to welcome an exceptional group of new faculty affiliates to our community: Questrom School of Business Assistant Professor Vassilis Digalakis; Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Adjunct Assistant Professor Nathanael Fillmore; Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences Assistant Professor Kinan Dak Albab; and College of Engineering Visiting Research Associate Professor Nese Lortlar Ünlü. Learn more about our new affiliates below.

Vassilis Digalakis, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Operations & Technology Management in the Questrom School of Business. Vassilis studies trustworthy AI from model design to deployment and real-world use. He works mainly on how to design AI systems that behave reliably, transparently, and appropriately for their context of use. He combines machine learning, optimization, and operations research to build such systems and to study how their deployment and governance shape adoption, downstream decisions, and real-world outcomes, particularly in healthcare and sustainability.

Nathanael Fillmore, PhD, is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. He leads a group at the VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School that uses VA clinical, genomic, and imaging data, together with machine learning and statistical methods, in research to improve patient care. His group is also working on software and methodological improvements to support these efforts. His work has appeared in a number of high-impact journals including JCO, JAMA Oncology, Blood, PNAS, Nature Medicine, and others.

Kinan Dak Albab, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. He is interested in building real systems and practical tools to improve privacy in the real-world. In his research, Dak Albab uses techniques from computer systems, cryptography, and programming languages. He builds systems to assist developers in ensuring that their applications comply with their desired privacy policies, including requirements mandated by privacy and data protection laws such as the GDPR and CCPA. Dak Albab’s software has been used in the real world to perform privacy-preserving analytics for the social good, enable health analytics over non-contact sensors, and validate the next generation of SDN network switches at Google.

Nese Lortlar Ünlü, M.D. is a Visiting Research Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering. She has over two decades of experience in histology, embryology, and translational biomedical research. Ünlü’s research interests lie at the intersection of personalized and functional medicine, data-driven clinical decision making, and translational innovation. Her work focuses on metabolic, autoimmune, and women’s health conditions, integrating AI-supported analytics, telemedicine, and systems-based approaches into clinical practice. She is involved in projects translating scientific insights into scalable, patient-centered care and preventive health strategies.

Hariri Institute Faculty Affiliates—thought leaders, problem solvers, and scholars from 66 departments across 13 BU schools and colleges—engage in high-impact interdisciplinary research in computing, AI, and data science, or leadership in teaching or training initiatives in computing or computational sciences. Learn more about the program and how to get involved here.