PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Kobi Gal

Also known as Ya'akov Gal, Yaakov Gal, Yakov Gal

Kobi Gal is a computer scientist who designs decision-making models for computer agents that work in groups with people, and who applies AI to citizen science and mental-health support. After a Harvard PhD under Avrom Jacob Pfeffer in 2006, he co-created Networks of Influence Diagrams and studied agents in mixed human-computer networks with the Colored Trails negotiation game. He won the Wolf Foundation's Krill Prize at Ben-Gurion University in 2013 and chaired the Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligence from 2017 to 2021; EurAI elected him a Fellow in 2022, and he was program chair of ECAI 2023. His group used reinforcement learning to keep Galaxy Zoo volunteers engaged and, from 2022, language models to detect suicide risk in online counseling chats. Today he is a full professor and director of Ben-Gurion University's Institute for the Foundations of AI and Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Human Machine Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh.

Now at
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Timeline

  1. 2006–2008

    Harvard PhD and influence diagrams

    He earns a PhD in computer science at Harvard University in 2006 with the dissertation Reasoning About Rationality and Beliefs, advised by Avrom Jacob Pfeffer. In 2008, he and Pfeffer publish Networks of Influence Diagrams in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, a graphical language for reasoning about agents' beliefs and decision-making processes.

  2. 2010

    Colored Trails and mixed networks

    In 2010, he publishes Agent decision-making in open mixed networks in the journal Artificial Intelligence with Barbara J. Grosz, Sarit Kraus, Avi Pfeffer and Stuart M. Shieber. The paper describes models that let computer agents learn and adapt to social attributes that shape people's decisions, tested in Colored Trails, a game in which players negotiate and exchange resources.

  3. 2013

    The Krill Prize

    In 2013, at Ben-Gurion University, he receives the Wolf Foundation's Krill Prize for young Israeli scientists, worth $10,000. The prize honours his software for identifying the decision-making process in an environment where several people work together on computers.

  4. 2017–2021

    Chair of the Israeli AI association

    From 2017 to 2021, he chairs the Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligence, a member society of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI). In 2018, as head of BGU's Human Computer Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Information Systems Engineering, he speaks on the pluses and minuses of the AI revolution in a lecture series of Americans for Ben-Gurion University.

  5. 2018

    Nudging Galaxy Zoo volunteers

    In 2018, his group presents an AAAI paper on intelligent intervention for Galaxy Zoo, a citizen science project in which volunteers classify galaxies. The group uses reinforcement learning to find a policy for showing motivational messages, and messages timed by predictions of when users will leave lead volunteers to classify significantly more galaxies.

  6. 2020–2023

    EurAI Fellow and ECAI chair

    He becomes a Senior Member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in 2020. In 2022, as a reader in artificial intelligence and human-machine intelligence at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, he is elected a EurAI Fellow for his contributions promoting AI research in Europe. He is program chair of ECAI 2023 in Kraków, where a programme committee of more than 2,600 scientists handles a record 1,896 submissions.

  7. 2022–2026

    Detecting suicide risk in counseling chats

    In 2022, he and colleagues present a COLING model that combines pre-trained language models with clinically approved suicidal cues to detect suicide risk in online counseling services, reaching 0.91 ROC-AUC. In 2026, he coauthors a study that adapts a large language model to predict suicide risk in thousands of Hebrew conversations from an Israeli online counselling service, along with CARE, a framework that fine-tunes open-source LLMs for Hebrew and Arabic to recommend real-time responses to crisis counselors.

  8. As of October 2026

    Institute director at Ben-Gurion

    He is a full professor and director of the Institute for the Foundations of AI at Ben-Gurion University and a member of its School of Brain Sciences and Cognition. He is also Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Human Machine Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, leads the AI and Data Science Research Group, and accepts PhD students for 2026–27 in safe and responsible AI and AI for social good.

Career

  1. NowBen-Gurion University of the NegevHead
  2. NowUniversity of EdinburghReader in Artificial Intelligence and Human Machine Intelligence
  3. NowSchool of Informatics, University of EdinburghGroup lead
  4. 2017–2021Israeli Association for Artificial IntelligenceChair

Education

  1. 2006Harvard UniversityPhD in computer science

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Edinburgh. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes University of Edinburgh. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes University of Edinburgh. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Edinburgh. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Kobi Gal yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Ya’akov Gal - The Mathematics Genealogy Project mathgenealogy.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Kobi Gal elected fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence | School of Informatics informatics.ed.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. [1401.3426] Networks of Influence Diagrams: A Formalism for Representing Agents' Beliefs and Decision-Making Processes arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Agent decision-making in open mixed networks - University of Edinburgh Research Explorer research.ed.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Tomorrow the Krill Prize will be distributed to ten young scientists - Hayadan hayadan.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe? - A4BGU americansforbgu.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. IAAI | European Association for Artificial Intelligence oldwebsite.eurai.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Bringing the Best of BGU to the United States - A4BGU americansforbgu.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Dr. Kobi Gal: Supporting Online Group Work | USC CAIS cais.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. IOS Press Ebooks - ECAI 2023 ebooks.iospress.nl. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Kraków to host ECAI 2023, the first ECAI to be held in Poland electronicspecifier.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Detecting Suicide Risk in Online Counseling Services: A Study in a Low-Resource Language - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  13. Combining domain knowledge with large language models for predicting suicide risk in online counselling services - Ben-Gurion University Research Portal cris.bgu.ac.il. Checked 20 October 2026.
  14. [2604.21352] CARE: Counselor-Aligned Response Engine for Online Mental-Health Support arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  15. Institute for the Foundations of AI - Ben-Gurion University Research Portal cris.bgu.ac.il. Checked 20 October 2026.
  16. Kobi Gal - University of Edinburgh homepage homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.