We’re delighted to announce that Dr Mohamed Zaki, Course Lead for the online course Data-Driven Design for Customer Experience (CX), has received the Highly Commended Paper Award at the prestigious Frontiers 2025 Conference.

Dr Zaki’s paper, “Personal Touch in Digital Customer Service: A Conceptual Framework of Relational Personalization for Conversational AI”, published in the Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP), explores how businesses can deliver a human-centred, emotionally intelligent experience through conversational AI. This research is not only timely but essential in a digital-first world where customer expectations are evolving rapidly.

This achievement is a testament to the cutting-edge research and expertise that underpin all of our courses at the University of Cambridge Online. Our learners benefit directly from the active research and real-world impact of our academic leads, like Dr Zaki, who bring fresh insight and practical frameworks straight into the virtual classroom.

Mohamed Zaki shares this recognition with his co-authors Jan H. Blümel and Thomas Bohné, and extends his thanks to Chatura Ranaweera and Marianna Sigala, co-editors of JSTP, for their support and for presenting the award. We’d also like to thank Yany Gregoire, Clay Voorhees, Paul Fombelle, and the full Frontiers 2025 team for organising such an inspiring event.

Read the award-winning paper here(Opens in a new window).

This award is just one example of how courses from the University of Cambridge Online, a division of the University of Cambridge, are fuelled by the latest academic research and thinking—giving learners the opportunity to engage directly with experts at the forefront of their fields.