Joshua Holstein is a fourth-year doctoral student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He studied industrial engineering with a focus on mechanical engineering at the Technical University Darmstadt before earning his Master's degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at KIT. As part of his studies, he spent a semester abroad at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and completed his master's thesis at Bayer AG. He joined the Applied AI Lab of the Digital Service Innovation Group in July 2022 as a research associate.

Research Focus

His research focuses on designing AI systems that enable effective human-AI collaboration for decision-making. This includes developing mechanisms such as uncertainty communication, explainability, and incentive alignment to help humans make better decisions by contextualizing the underlying data. A second strand of his work examines how these design choices influence the human side of the collaboration, particularly the mental models that decision-makers form about AI systems and the resulting effects on decision outcomes. His work combines behavioral experiments with design science approaches to develop frameworks and design principles that enhance collaborative decision-making while avoiding pitfalls such as overreliance and misinformation.

• Human-AI Collaboration
• Uncertainty Communication and Explainability
• Mental Models and Decision-Making

Projects

• Data Understanding

Teaching

• Artificial Intelligence in Service Systems: Generative AI & Adoption (SS25, SS26)
• Artificial Intelligence in Service Systems: Applications in Computer Vision (SS 23, SS 24)
• Artificial Intelligence in Service Systems (WS24/25, WS25/26)
• Applied AI in Service Systems (WS24)
• Seminar: Data Science for Industrial Applications (SS 23, SS 24)