Danial Amin

I am a doctoral researcher at theUniversity of Vaasa, supervised byDr. Joni Salminen. My work is about whether generative AI can represent users fairly — how these systems build personas, where they flatten the people they are meant to describe, and what that costs communities already thin on the ground in the training data.

Alongside the doctorate I am Senior Data Science Lead atENI Plenitude; before that I built GenAI tools for designers at Samsung Design Innovation Center. That order matters — I keep shipping the kind of system I spend my papers criticising, which is a useful place to argue from.

Longer version

Before Samsung I built AI systems in engineering domains across Pakistan, the USA, MENA and Ireland, and came to research through practice rather than the other way round.

I have run space education and popularisation in Pakistan for years through Space Technology Education and Popularization — World Space Week (2014–2022), Space Summer School (2017–2022) and Space Camps — and volunteer with theNational Center of GIS & Space Applications. Four languages, some poetry and dark prose, otherwise mostly overthinking or cooking.

Every label opposite comes from a CV, a bibliography or a published sentence — nothing is inferred. A generated persona cannot make that claim, and the gap is the research.

Position
Doctoral researcher · PersonaTeam, University of Vaasa
Based in
Espoo, Finland
Languages
English (C1) · French (A1) · Urdu (C2) · Punjabi (C1)
Record
31 publications, 2017–2026 · 38 co-authors
Works on
AI Ethics and Bias Mitigation · Human-Computer Interaction · Machine Learning Applications
In his own words
A persona can be entirely plausible and still represent no one.

Publications

all 31 · projector · bibtex

31publications
14first-authored
23venues
38co-authors
2017–2026span
113citations

Selected — starred in the full list

20265 items

Creating and Evaluating Personas Using Generative AI: A Scoping Review of 81 Articles

Danial Amin, Joni Salminen, Farhan Ahmed, M.H. Sonja Tervola, Sankalp Sethi, Bernard J. Jansen

CHI'202640 cit.

@inproceedings{amin2025generative_review,
  title = {Creating and Evaluating Personas Using Generative AI: A Scoping Review of 81 Articles},
  citations = {40},
  author = {Amin, Danial and Salminen, Joni and Ahmed, Farhan and Tervola, M.H. Sonja and Sethi, Sankalp and Jansen, Bernard J.},
  booktitle = {CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'26)},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Published},
  selected = {true},
  abbr = {CHI'2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3772318.3790608},
  html = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3790608},
  slides = {https://speakerdeck.com/damin/creating-and-evaluating-personas-using-generative-ai-a-scoping-review-of-81-articles}
}

How Can Tensions in Sustainability Transitions Be Made Visible?: Challenging the Actor-Centered Ecosystem Approach through Persona-Based Modeling

Danial Amin, Joni Salminen, Farhan Ahmed, Emillia Zemskova, Bernard J. Jansen

PalgraveIn review

@incollection{amin2026ecosystem,
  title = {How Can Tensions in Sustainability Transitions Be Made Visible?: Challenging the Actor-Centered Ecosystem Approach through Persona-Based Modeling},
  citations = {0},
  author = {Amin, Danial and Salminen, Joni and Ahmed, Farhan and Zemskova, Emillia and Jansen, Bernard J.},
  booktitle = {Ecosystems and Networks for Sustainable Business},
  publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan},
  year = {2026},
  note = {In review},
  abbr = {Palgrave},
  selected = {true}
}

How to Model AI Agents as Personas?: Applying the Persona Ecosystem Playground to 41,300 Posts on Moltbook for Behavioral Insights

Danial Amin, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen

BITIn review1 cit.

@article{amin2026_moltbook,
  title = {How to Model AI Agents as Personas?: Applying the Persona Ecosystem Playground to 41,300 Posts on Moltbook for Behavioral Insights},
  citations = {1},
  author = {Amin, Danial and Salminen, Joni and Jansen, Bernard J.},
  year = {2026},
  journal = {Behaviour & Information Technology},
  abbr = {BIT},
  note = {In review},
  selected = {true},
  html = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03140}
}

Large language models (LLMs) in human-computer interaction: Using LLM-generated personas to model everything from minority views to entire ecosystems

Danial Amin, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen, Ilkka Kaate, Waleed Akhtar

CRC Press2 cit.

@incollection{amin2024llm_personas,
  title = {Large language models (LLMs) in human-computer interaction: Using LLM-generated personas to model everything from minority views to entire ecosystems},
  citations = {2},
  author = {Amin, Danial and Salminen, Joni and Jansen, Bernard J. and Kaate, Ilkka and Akhtar, Waleed},
  booktitle = {Artificial Intelligence \& Large Language Models: A Scientific Perspective},
  publisher = {CRC Press},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Published},
  abbr = {CRC Press},
  selected = {true},
  doi = {10.1201/9781003492252-10},
  html = {https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003492252-10}
}

Proposing a Quantitative Framework for Persona Set Diversity Measurement as a Pathway to Inclusive User Representation

Danial Amin, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen

IEEE AccessIn review

@article{amin2025diversity_personas,
  title = {Proposing a Quantitative Framework for Persona Set Diversity Measurement as a Pathway to Inclusive User Representation},
  citations = {0},
  author = {Amin, Danial and Salminen, Joni and Jansen, Bernard J.},
  journal = {IEEE Access},
  year = {2026},
  note = {In review},
  abbr = {IEEE Access},
  selected = {true}
}

20252 items

"When AI Writes Personas": Analyzing Lexical Diversity in LLM-Generated Persona Descriptions

Sankalp Sethi, Joni Salminen, Danial Amin, Bernard J. Jansen

CHI'25Published, Extended Abstract16 cit.

@inproceedings{sethi2025lexical_diversity,
  title = {"When AI Writes Personas": Analyzing Lexical Diversity in LLM-Generated Persona Descriptions},
  citations = {16},
  author = {Sethi, Sankalp and Salminen, Joni and Amin, Danial and Jansen, Bernard J.},
  booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems'2025},
  year = {2025},
  note = {Published, Extended Abstract},
  doi = {10.1145/3706599.3719712},
  abbr = {CHI'25},
  url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3719712},
  html = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3719712},
  selected = {true}
}

Generative AI Personas Considered Harmful? Examining the Risks of Algorithmic User Representations in HCI Design

Danial Amin, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen, Joongi Shin, Dong Hun Kim

IJHCS18 cit.

@article{amin2025genai_harmful,
  title = {Generative AI Personas Considered Harmful? Examining the Risks of Algorithmic User Representations in HCI Design},
  citations = {18},
  author = {Amin, Danial and Salminen, Joni and Jansen, Bernard J. and Shin, Joongi and Kim, Dong Hun},
  journal = {International Journal of Human-Computer Studies},
  year = {2025},
  note = {Published},
  abbr = {IJHCS},
  selected = {true},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103657},
  html = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581925002149}
}