Abhilekha Dalal
Research Assistant Professor
Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science
Contact information
2162 Engineering Hall
adalal@k-state.edu
Personal website
Education
- Ph.D., Computer Science, Kansas State University, 2024
- M.S., Computer Science, Kansas State University, 2021
- B.Tech., Computer Science, Amity University, 2017
Professional experience
Abhilekha Dalal is a research assistant professor for the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (CAIDS) at Kansas State University. She received her doctorate in computer science from Kansas State University in 2024, where her dissertation focused on concept-based methods to interpret hidden neuron activations in deep learning models. She also holds a master’s degree in computer science from Kansas State University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Amity University, Manesar, India.
Prior to her faculty role, Dalal served as a graduate research assistant in the Data Semantics Lab at K-State, where she contributed to multiple interdisciplinary projects on explainable AI, knowledge graphs, and ontology modeling. She has also worked as a Software Developer at Kansas State University’s IT Center and as an Associate Software Engineer at Nucleus Software Exports, India.
Research
Dalal’s research lies at the intersection of explainable artificial intelligence, deep learning and semantic knowledge representation. She develops neurosymbolic approaches that combine machine learning with structured background knowledge to improve the transparency, interpretability and trustworthiness of AI systems. Her work introduced Concept Induction methods to explain hidden neuron activations and led to the creation of ConceptLens, a real-time interpretation platform. She has applied her methods to domains such as biomedical informatics, agriculture and enterprise risk intelligence.
Academic highlights
Dalal has authored or co-authored eight peer-reviewed publications and co-edited a comprehensive IOS Press volume on Neurosymbolic AI and Knowledge Graphs. She has delivered invited talks at NeSy 2024, the Knowledge Graph Conference (2023) and IIIT-Delhi (2022). She serves as a reviewer for leading journals and conferences, including AAAI, ECAI, IEEE TNNLS and the Semantic Web Journal, and has been a program committee member for AAAI 2024 and 2025.
Her recognitions include multiple travel awards, two Graduate Student of the Month awards from the K-State computer science department and invited leadership roles such as co-chair of the K-State AI Symposium.