cv

Curriculum vitae in structured form, plus a downloadable PDF.

General Information

Full Name Alejandro Benito-Santos
Position Permanent Professor, Department of Computer Languages and Systems, UNED
Previous Position Assistant Professor (Ayudante Doctor), UNED (2025-2026)
Research Areas NLP, HCI, Information Visualization, and Digital Humanities
Location Madrid, Spain

Awards and Research Leadership

  • 2026
    CHI 2026 Best Paper Award
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    • "Chasing Meaning and/or Insight? A Survey on Evaluation Practices at the Intersection of Visualization and the Humanities."
    Paper

Education

  • 2020
    PhD in Computer Engineering (International Doctorate)
    University of Salamanca
    • Thesis: Supporting Methodology Transfer in Visualization Research with Literature-Based Discovery and Visual Text Analytics.
    • Grade: Cum Laude.
  • 2016
    MSc in Intelligent Systems
    University of Salamanca
    • MSc thesis: Data Visualization in Digital Humanities (highest distinction).
  • 2008
    BEng Computer Engineering
    University of Salamanca

Academic Appointments

  • 2026-present
    Permanent Professor
    UNED, Department of Computer Languages and Systems
    • Permanent appointment since June 2026.
    • Teaching and research in NLP, visualization, and digital humanities.
  • 2025-2026
    Assistant Professor (Ayudante Doctor)
    UNED, Department of Computer Languages and Systems
    • September 2025-June 2026.
  • 2024-2025
    Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Researcher
    UNED, Department of Computer Languages and Systems
    • Research line: Visual Analytics for NLP Explainability and Fairness.
  • 2022-2023
    Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellow
    University of Salamanca (GRIAL) and LINHD-UNED
  • 2021
    Postdoctoral Researcher
    University of Salamanca, VisUSAL
  • 2016-2020
    Researcher and Associate Lecturer
    University of Salamanca

Selected Publications

  • 2026
    The Ruler and the Judge: Benchmark-Conditional Evaluation of LLM-as-a-Judge
    NeurIPS 2026, Evaluations and Datasets Track
    • Adrián Ghajari, Alejandro Benito-Santos, and Víctor Fresno. Accepted, to appear.
  • 2026
    Chasing Meaning and/or Insight? A Survey on Evaluation Practices at the Intersection of Visualization and the Humanities
    ACM CHI
    • Alejandro Benito-Santos, Florian Windhager, Aida Horaniet Ibañez, Rabea Kleymann, Alfie Abdul-Rahman, and Eva Mayr. Best Paper Award.
    Paper
  • 2025
    Beyond Averages: Learning with Annotator Disagreement in STS
    EMNLP
    • Alejandro Benito-Santos and Adrián Ghajari.
  • 2025
    Robust Estimation of Population-Level Effects in Repeated-Measures NLP Experimental Designs
    ACL, Volume 1 - Long Papers
    • Alejandro Benito-Santos, Adrián Ghajari, and Víctor Fresno.
    Paper

Invited Talks and Seminars

  • June 2026
    Invited Keynote Speaker - Human Behind the Data
    Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Getafe, Spain
    • Presented research as part of a panel on humanities, digital methods, and digital epistemologies.
  • May 2026
    Learning with Disagreements and Perspectivism in NLP
    MSc in Machine Learning, Public University of Navarre (UPNA), Pamplona, Spain
    • Lecture on disagreement, perspectivism, and the representation of diverse perspectives in natural language processing.
    Talk

University Teaching

  • 2023-2027
    Data Visualization (distance learning)
    UNED, MA in Digital Humanities
    • 5 ECTS. Online teaching focused on visualization tools for complex data.
  • 2026-2027
    Intelligent Access to Information (distance learning)
    UNED, MSc in Language Technologies
    • 6 ECTS. Online teaching focused on information retrieval and question answering.
  • 2026-2027
    Programming Strategies and Data Structures (distance learning)
    UNED, BSc in Computer Engineering and BSc in Information Technology Engineering
    • 6 ECTS. Online teaching focused on problem-solving strategies, programming, and fundamental data structures.
  • 2024-2026
    Text Representation in Vector and Probabilistic Spaces (distance learning)
    UNED, MSc in Language Technologies
    • 6 ECTS. Online teaching focused on embedding models.
  • 2025-2027
    Programming Languages and Processors (distance learning)
    UNED, BSc in Information Technology Engineering
    • 6 ECTS. Online teaching focused on the formal specification of programming languages.
  • 2022-2023
    Data Visualization (distance learning)
    UNED, MSc in Data Science and Engineering
    • 4 ECTS.
  • 2022-2023
    Cloud Computing and Network Services Management (distance learning)
    University of Salamanca, MSc in Computer Engineering
    • 4 ECTS.
  • 2017-2018
    Informatica I
    University of Salamanca, BSc in Statistics
    • 3 ECTS practical teaching in introductory programming and data structures.
  • 2017-2018
    Human-Computer Interaction
    University of Salamanca, BSc in Computer Engineering
    • 13.5 ECTS practical teaching; coordinator of "Interfaces Imaginadas".
  • 2020-2022
    Python Programming and Computational Tools for Bioinformatics
    University of Salamanca, Diploma in Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics
    • Courses in Python programming and computational methods.

Advising and Teaching Innovation

  • Co-supervisor of Adrián Ghajari Espinosa's PhD at UNED, with Víctor Fresno (since September 2024).
  • Co-supervisor of Adrián Ghajari Espinosa's MSc thesis on semantic similarity in Spanish song lyrics (UNED, September 2024).
  • Co-supervisor of David Eduardo Delgado Camacho's MSc thesis on a framework and visual analytics tool for exploring compositionality in sentence embeddings (UNED, June 2025).
  • Director of UNED Summer Course 2024 on conversational AI (20 hours).
  • Principal Investigator, teaching innovation project on online Python learning architecture (University of Salamanca, 2017-2018).
  • Member, Innovation Group "Intelligent Systems for Learning" (UNED, since 2024).

Research Projects (Funded)

  • 2022-2026
    ODESIA - Espacio de Observacion del Desarrollo del Español en la IA
    UNED / Red.es
    • National AI Strategy project. Participation in the leaderboard/evaluation line from 2024.
  • 2022-2023
    CLS-INFRA - Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure
    Horizon 2020, INFRAIA-2020-1 (GA 101004984)
  • 2018-2021
    PROVIDEDH - Progressive Visual Decision-Making in Digital Humanities
    CHIST-ERA (PCIN-2017-064)
  • 2015-2019
    exploreAT! - Exploring Austria's Culture through the Language Glass
    Austrian Academy of Sciences / University of Salamanca
  • 2014-2024
    Additional competitive and transfer projects
    University of Salamanca and collaborators
    • Includes projects in sports analytics, medical image machine learning, and technology transfer.

Service, Committees, and Recognition

  • Co-chair, ODESIA-Challenge 2024 (international benchmark for Spanish LLM evaluation).
  • Reviewer for ACL, EMNLP, Computational Linguistics, IEEE VIS, IEEE PacificVis, ACM CHI, IEEE Access, and JOCCH.
  • Member of the VIS4DH scientific panel.
  • Invited participant, Dagstuhl Seminar 23381 on Visualization and the Humanities (2023).
  • ANECA accreditations (2023): Profesor Contratado Doctor (PCD), Profesor Ayudante Doctor (PAD), and Profesor de Universidad Privada.

International Visits and Professional Experience

  • 2016-2023
    Research visits
    Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna), PSNC (Poznan), LINHD-UNED (Madrid)
    • STSM (ENeL/COST), predoctoral stay, and postdoctoral stay.
  • 2011-2016
    Mobile software engineering and consulting
    Concise Media (London), Floxx (London), Victor Chandler (Gibraltar), Aurora Software (Madrid)
    • Industry experience in mobile application development and technology consulting.