Dalia El-Shimy, PhD

I’m an engineer-turned-academic-turned-user-researcher, currently leading UX Research at Wise, and based in London. Before joining Wise, I built and led the research team at Miro. And, before that, I co-led the UX Research function at Shopify, where I started in 2014 as the Montreal office’s first UX Researcher, before establishing the discipline and growing the local team there. In 2020, I moved to Shopify’s Berlin office, on a similar mission to build out a research team and practice there. If you’re interested in learning more about my work or checking out my portfolio, feel free to drop me a line or contact me on LinkedIn.

In a previous life, I completed a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering at McGill University, and a Bachelor of Applied Sciences in Mathematics and Engineering at Queen’s University. During my time at McGill, I worked as a Research Assistant under Prof. Jeremy R. Cooperstock’s supervision in the Shared Reality Lab (SRL), and was a member of the Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM), as well as the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology (CIRMMT). That’s when I first got into UX Research, and during that time my work was largely centered around the intersection of human-computer interaction and music technology. You can learn more about those projects on my academic research portfolio.

Between 2009 and 2014, I was also the Teaching Assistant for McGill’s Human-Computer Interaction course, where I taught graduate and undergraduate engineering students how to design, build and test products from a user-centered perspective.

In the past, I have also been known to ramble on the airwaves as a volunteer radio DJ at both Queen’s CFRC and McGill’s CKUT stations. These days, however, you’ll find me channelling my energy into eating all of the ice cream, nerding out about David Bowie, practicing and probably failing at making flaky pie crust, or continuing my quest to find out whether anyone in Montréal makes a better croissant than Au Kouign Amann.