Ruairi O’Reilly, an ADAPT researcher at Munster Technological University, recently served as Special Sessions Chair at XAI 2026, the 4th World Conference on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence, held in Fortaleza, Brazil.
This year’s conference accepted 18 special sessions, reflecting both the strong engagement of the global XAI community and the expanding scope of explainable AI research. Special sessions provide an important platform for connecting XAI with emerging domains, applications and communities beyond traditional computer science, fostering collaboration across disciplines, sectors and real-world challenges.
O’Reilly also chaired the conference’s XAI in Healthcare session, which featured presentations by Luís Gustavo Souza Machado, Rafael Ferreira, Alfa Marine Ferreira, Mishell Cadena and Leonardo Ferreira. Their work addressed key challenges in medical imaging, ultrasound segmentation, cervical cytology, human-centred medical AI and neonatal pain detection, highlighting the growing importance of explainability in clinically significant healthcare applications.
