News and Updates

March, 2025: Our journal article on Modeling the phases of rule learning during problem solving with an interactive learning environment with Deniz Sonmez Unal, Kate Arrington, and Erin Walker has been published in the User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction journal.
March, 2025: Our CHI Special Interest Group proposal on PhysioCHI: Human-Centered Physiological Computing in Practice with Teodora Mitrevska, Benjamin Tag, Monica Perusquia-Hernandez, Arinobu Niijima, Ludwig Sidenmark, Abdallah El Ali, Sven Mayer, and Francesco Chiossi was accepted to CHI 2025 in Japan. Looking forward to bringing together researchers interested in physiological signals in human-computer interaction. Join us!
February, 2025: Our research paper on Perceptions and Preferences: Deaf ASL-Signing Users’ Insights on Video Elements, Styles and Layouts with Khulood Alkhudaidi, Tish Burke, Rachel Boll, Shruti Mahajan, and Jeanne Reis was accepted to be presented at CHI 2025.
December, 2024: Our case study on Conducting HCI Research with the Deaf Community in American Sign Language: Practices and Experiences with Shruti Mahajan, Rachel Boll, Khulood Alkhudaidi, and Jeanne Reis has been accepted to present at CHI 2025 in Japan.
November, 2024: Giving a public talk on Thinking with AI: The Role of Brain Sensing in Human-AI Interaction at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute
September, 2024: Heading back to Harvard to start fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
August, 2024: Accepted invitation to serve as one of the Technical Program Chairs (with Carine Lallemand and Philipp Wintersberger) for the 2025 Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work (CHIWORK) which will be held in Amsterdam in June 2025.
August, 2024: Looking forward to our summer Research Symposium of inspiring RET projects on engineering for people and planet.
July, 2024: Our paper on Examining the Impact of Digital Jury Moderation on the Polarization of U.S. Political Communities on Social Media with Chris Micek was published in Interacting with Computers
July, 2024: Officially on sabbatical for the 2024-25 academic year.
June, 2024: Kickoff of Year 3 of the WPI Research Experience for Teachers on Engineering for People and Planet. Excited to welcome 11 teachers to conduct research at WPI.
June, 2024: Kathy Chen presented our poster "Research Experiences for Teachers (RET): Engineering for People and the Planet as Inspiration to Teach Integrated STEM" with Donna Taylor and our paper at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference (ASEE '24). More info here: WPI at ASEE 2024
May, 2024: Selected as 2024-25 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow.
May, 2024: Attending the ACM CHI Conference in Honolulu and the PhysioCHI Workshop: Towards Best Practices for Integrating Physiological Signals in HCI and the Workshop on the Future of Cognitive Personal Informatics
March, 2024: The 2024 Women in Data Science Central Massaschusetts Conference will be held at WPI March 13th. I will moderate a panel on AI and Healthcare.
March, 2024: Looking forward to giving a keynote talk and seeing some exciting projects at the Neureality Hackathon in New York City on March 8-11. Join us to work on projects at the intersection of neurotech and virtual reality!
February, 2024: The call for participation is out for the Student Consortium at CHIWORK 2024. We extend a warm invitation to undergraduate and graduate students who are researching the evolving landscape of Human-Computer Interaction and its role in shaping the future of work. Deadline: March 11.
January, 2024: WPI's C term has started. Excited for the next group of students in the CS3041 Human-Computer Interaction class as well as the CS525/NEU505 Brain-Computer Interaction class.
November, 2023: The WPI Journal published a short piece on our work on the future of robots and work in the WPI FORW-RD NRT Program titled The Humanity of Robots in the Workplace
November, 2023: Will be attending the CRA Level Up Workshop in Boston on inclusive computing programs. I will be leading the working group on managing booming enrollments without damaging diversity efforts.
November, 2023: Will be attending the Dagstuhl Seminar on Human-AI Interaction for Work.
October, 2023: Our paper on "User Perceptions and Preferences for Online Surveys in American Sign Language: An Exploratory Study." with Shruti Mahajan, Khulood Alkhudaidi, Rachel Boll, Jeanne Reis, Tish Burke, Brittany Henriques, Isabelle Cordova and Zoey Walker will be presented at ASSETS 2023 in October. [Video]
October, 2023: I was interviewed for this article on AI and Neuroscience in AI Business.
October, 2023: Joined the organizing committee for the 2024 CHIWORK Symposium on HCI and the Future of Work as the Student Consortium Co-Chair.
July, 2023: Our WPI-Lehigh-Pitt team (Kate Arrington, Theresa Mowad, Deniz Sonmez Unal, Alicia Howell-Munson and Erin Walker) presented a poster at the CogSci 2023 conference in Sydney on Classification of Rule Learning Phases in Inductive Reasoning.
July, 2023: Our WPI-Lehigh-Pitt team (Kate Arrington, Theresa Mowad, Deniz Sonmez Unal, Alicia Howell-Munson and Erin Walker) had a poster and talk at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) 2023 in Tokyo. The paper talk was on Eliciting Proactive and Reactive Control During Use of an Interactive Learning Environment and the poster was on Classification of Brain Signals Collected During a Rule Learning Paradigm.
April, 2023: Our paper on Impact of BCI-Informed Visual Effect Adaptation in a Walking Simulator with Max Chen and Gillian Smith was presented at the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2023 conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
January-March, 2023 Spending WPI's C term abroad as an advisor to the off-campus global project center in Eilat.
November, 2022:Honored to serve on the National Academy of Science Panel on Assessment of Humans in Complex Systems
July, 2022: Our paper on "IndexPen: Two-Finger Text Input with Millimeter-Wave Radar" with Haowen Wei, Ziheng Li, Alexander D. Galvan, Zhuoran Su, Xiao Zhang, and Kaveh Pahlavan was published in ACM IMWUT and will be presented at Ubicomp 2022 in September.
July, 2022: Our first Research Experience for Teachers Site at WPI focusing on Engineering for People and the Planet launched! We welcomed 10 teachers to WPI labs for the summer.
June, 2022: Ally presented our paper BrainEx: Interactive Visual Exploration and Discovery of Sequence Similarity in Brain Signals with Alicia Howell-Munson, Christopher Micek, Ziheng Li, Michael Clements, Andrew C. Nolan, Jackson Powell at the ACM EICS conference in France.
June, 2022: Our group had two papers at the CHI Work symposium. The first was Towards Brain Metrics for Improving Multi-Agent Adaptive Human-Robot Collaboration: A Preliminary Study with Alicia Howell-Munson, Emily Doherty, Peter Gavriel, Claire Nicolas, Adam Norton, Rodica Neamtu, Holly Yanco, and Yi-Ning Wu. The other was Role of Technology in Increasing Representation of Deaf Individuals in Future STEM Workplaces with Shruti Mahajan, Khulood Alkhudaidi, Rachel Boll, and Jeanne Reis.
May, 2022: Our paper "Towards Sign Language-Centric Design of ASL Survey Tools" was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Best Paper Award.
May, 2022: Attending the ACM CHI Conference in New Orleans.
February, 2022: Was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor.
February, 2022: Our paper on "Interaction with Touch-Sensitive Knitted Fabrics: User Perceptions and Everyday Use Experiments" with Denisa Qori McDonald, Shruti Mahajan, Rich Vallett, Geneviève Dion, and Ali Shokoufandeh has been accepted to the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems.
February, 2022: Our paper on "Towards Sign Language-Centric Design of ASL Survey Tools." with Shruti Mahajan, Zoey Walker, Rachel Boll, Michelle Santacreu, Ally Salvino, Michael Westfort, and Jeanne Reis has been accepted to the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems.
January, 2022: We are now recruiting teachers for our NSF-funded research experience for teachers site: Engineering for People and the Planet. Middle and high school STEM teachers will conduct paid research for 6 weeks at WPI labs (in person). The research experiences focus on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals for an integrated approach of learning and doing science, math, and engineering through real-world problems. Dates: July 5 – August 16, 2022. More Info. Apply Here! Deadline is Feb 28. March 14. (deadline extended)
November, 2021: Two papers conditionally accepted to ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems. More info soon!
October, 2021: Some News: WPI to Host Hands-On Research Experiences for Worcester-Area Teachers to Support K-12 STEM Education. Our NSF-funded Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Site will fund laboratory opportunities that use engineering to solve global problems.
October, 2021: We were awarded the Best Paper Honorable Mention at the European Symposium on Usable Security for our paper Stewardship of Smart Devices Security for the Aging Population with Lorenzo DeCarli and Indrakshi Ray.
October, 2021: Our paper on "Understanding HCI Practices and Challenges of Experiment Reporting with Brain Signals: Towards Reproducibility and Reuse" with Felix Putze, Susanne Putze, Merle Sagehorn and Chris Micek was accepted to ACM TOCHI.
August, 2021: Awarded NSF funding for a new Research Experience for Teachers Site at WPI on "Engineering for People and the Planet: Research Experiences for Teaching Integrated STEM" with Katherine Chen and the WPI Stem Education Center. More info coming soon!
July, 2021: Our proposal with Shruti Mahajan, Denisa Qori McDonald, Ali Shokoufandeh and Genevieve Dion was selected for the Snap Creative Challenge on the Future of Co-located Social AR.
July, 2021: New paper on Stewardship of Smart Devices Security for the Aging Population with Lorenzo DeCarli and Indrakshi Ray coming soon to the Vision track at the European Symposium on Usable Security.
June, 2021: New paper with Ally Howell-Munson, Deniz Unal Sonmez, Erin Walker and Kate Arrington out on Preliminary steps towards detection of proactive and reactive control states during learning with fNIRS brain signals, and will be presented at the First International Workshop on Multimodal Artificial Intelligence in Education.
May, 2021: Our paper Toward Understanding Effects of Digital Jury Moderation on the Polarization of Social Media Users with Chris Micek and Zijian Guan was presented at the CHI'21 workshop In search of the alternative future: Developing participatory digital citizenship to address the crisis of democracy.
April, 2021: New book/journal out: Improving HCI with Brain Input: Review, Trends, and Outlook, written with Felix Putze
March, 2021: Joined the Editoral Board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI).
March, 2021: Our article is out: Unsupervised fNIRS feature extraction with CAE and ESN autoencoder for driver cognitive load classification with Ruixue Liu, Bryan Reimer, Siyang Song, Bruce Mehler.
March, 2021: WPI's D term has started. Excited for the next group in the CS3041 Human-Computer Interaction class.
January, 2021: WPI's Spring semester begins. I'll be teaching CS525/NEU505 Brain-Computer Interaction.
Dec, 2020: Coming soon to the International Journal of Social Robotics: Investigating Trust in Interaction with Inconsistent Embodied Virtual Agents with Reza Moradinezhad.
Dec, 2020: Coming soon to the Journal of Neural Engineering Unsupervised fNIRS feature extraction with CAE and ESN autoencoder for driver cognitive load classification with Ruixue Liu, Bryan Reimer, Bruce Mehler and Siyang Song.
Oct, 2020: Attending the 2020 virtual ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS). Rachel Boll will be presenting our paper "Creating questionnaires that align with ASL linguistic principles and cultural practices within the Deaf community." Watch our video preview here.
Oct, 2020: WPI's Fall B term has begun. Looking forward to another term teaching CS3041 Human-Computer Interaction.
Oct, 2020: Coming soon to Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT) and Ubicomp 2021: "Knitted Sensors: Designs and Novel Approaches for Real-Time, Real-World Sensing" with Denisa Qori McDonald, Richard Vallet, Genevieve Dion, Ali Shokoufandeh.
July, 2020: Coming soon in the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility: "Creating questionnaires that align with ASL linguistic principles and cultural practices within the Deaf community" with Rachel Boll, Shruti Mahajan, Jeanne Reis.
July, 2020: Coming soon in the International Journal of Human Computer Studies: CODA: Mobile Interface for Enabling Safer Navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Real-World Settings" with Kim Jackson Ryan and Missy Cummings.
May, 2020: Coming soon in the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces: "fNIRS-based classification of mind-wandering with personalized window selection for multimodal learning interfaces" with Ruixue Liu, Erin Walker, Leah Friedman, and Kate Arrington.
May, 2020: New paper accepted to IEEE Access on "RF Cloud for Cyberspace Intelligence" with Kaveh Pahlavan, Julang Ying, Ziheng Li, John Loftus, and Zehua Dong.
April, 2020: Our paper (with Deniz Sonmez Unal, Kate Arrington and Erin Walker) titled "Using Thinkalouds to Understand Rule Learning and Cognitive Control Mechanisms within an ITS" was accepted to the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), which will be held in July.
March, 2020: Looking forward to giving a technical talk at the Women in Data Science Central Massachusetts Conference on March 2.
January, 2020: New joint project: Closed-Loop BCI Using Adaptive Kinetic Architectural Design to Regulate Human Emotional States with Ali Yousefi (WPI Computer Science) and Soroush Farzin (WPI Civil & Environmental Engineering), funded through WPI's Transformative Research and Innovation, Accelerating Discovery (TRIAD) program
January, 2020: Spring term started. Teaching new Special Topics course on Brain-Computer Interaction
January, 2020: Some WPI News: WPI to Help Develop Novel Sign Language Technology
January, 2020: Our IEEE ICCE Paper on ThuMouse was selected for the Best Paper Award competition.
November, 2019: Our paper will be presented at the IEEE ICCE International Conference on Consumer Electronics: ThuMouse: A Micro-gesture Cursor Input through mmWave Radar-based Interaction.
October, 2019: New NSF Award with Jeanne Reis: CHS: Medium: Improving Information Accessibility with Sign Language First Technology. I am recruiting PhD students interested in working on this project, and encourage applicants from the Deaf community as well as students interested in improving accessibility. This work is in collaboration with the Center for Research and Training at the Learning Center for the Deaf. Researchers will be joining a strong Deaf community there.
September, 2019: Our paper The Reality of Reality-Based Interaction: Understanding the Impact of a Framework as a Research Tool with Audrey Girouard, Orit Shaer, Michael Poor and Robert Jacob was published in the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) Journal.
NSF highlighted our recent grant in this episode of NSF360.

July, 2019: Giving keynote talk at Neuroadaptive Technology Conference in Liverpool, England.
May, 2019: CHI conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
March, 2019: Our paper "The Reality of Reality-Based Interaction: Understanding the Impact of a Framework as a Research Tool" with Audrey Girouard, Orit Shaer, Michael Poor and Rob Jacob has been accepted to the journal TOCHI.
March, 2019: Speaking about careers in academia at the 2019 Scientista Symposium in Boston
January 31, 2019: Our lab was highlighted on Worcester's Channel 3 News

January 30, 2019: I'll be giving a talk at noon in FL Lower Perrault on Enhancing Human-Computer Interaction with Real-time Brain Input
January, 29 2019: Some WPI News: A New Kind of Thinking Cap: WPI Researchers Are Using Brain Imaging to Improve Personalized Learning Environments
January, 2019: Appointed Deputy Editor of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies after serving for 5 years on the editorial board
January, 2019: Our paper "Evaluating Rule-based Programming and Reinforcement Learning for Personalising an Intelligent System" (with Ruixue Liu, Advait Sarkar, and Sebastian Tschiatschek) was accepted to the Explainable Smart Systems Workshop at IUI 2019.
January, 2019: WPI Spring term begins. Teaching CS 546 Human-Computer Interaction (grad course)
October, 2018: WPI is hiring in computer science, neuroscience, data science, robotics engineering, etc! More info here. Spread the word!
October, 2018: ICMI Conference in Boulder, CO. Looking forward to workshop on Modeling Cognitive Processes from Multimodal Data (MCPMD)
September, 2018: Out for surgery. Back soon!
September, 2018: Our paper "Integrating Non-Invasive Neuroimaging and Computer Log Data to Improve Understanding of Cognitive Processes" was accepted to the ICMI workshop on Modeling Cognitive Processes from Multimodal Data (MCPMD)
September, 2018: News about our NSF award: NSF funds new integrative approaches to cognitive science, neuroscience
August, 2018: NSF Award with Erin Walker (ASU/Pitt) and Kate Arrington (Lehigh) NCS-FO: Integrating Non-Invasive Neuroimaging and Educational Data Mining to Improve Understanding of Robust Learning Processes"
August, 2018: Microsoft Technical Leadership Advisory Board (TLAB) on Brain-Computer Interfaces Meeting in Redmond, WA
August, 2018: Start new position in Computer Science Department at WPI
August, 2018: NSF-funded REThink Research Symposium showcases research conducted over the summer by Philadelphia area high school and community college teachers.
July, 2018: Neuroergonomics Conference at Drexel in Philadelphia. Leah presents our paper "Towards Neuroadaptive Personal Learning Environments: Using fNIRS to Detect Changes in Attentional State" and Reza presents our paper "Assessing human reaction to a virtual agent’s facial feedback in a simple Q&A setting"
June, 2018: Kickoff of the NSF-funded Research Experience for Teachers Site for Machine Learning to Enhance Human-Centered Computing. Check out Kyle's and Damian's websites about their projects in the Advanced Interaction Research Lab over the summer.
May, 2018: Two abstracts accepted to Neuroergonomics Conference: "Towards Neuroadaptive Personal Learning Environments: Using fNIRS to Detect Changes in Attentional State" with Leah Friedman, Erin Walker, Ruixue Liu and Aria Kim and "Assessing human reaction to a virtual agent’s facial feedback in a simple Q&A setting" with Reza Moradinezhad
April, 2018: I'm co-organizing a workshop at ICMI on Modeling Cognitive Processes from Multimodal Data with Felix Putze, Jutta Hild, Enkelejda Kasneci, Akane Sano, and Tanja Schultz. Deadline: July 30.
April, 2018: Our paper Reflecting on the Impact of HCI Frameworks with Audrey Girouard, Robert Jacob, Orit Shaer and Michael Poor will be presented at the CHI 2018 workshop on Rethinking Interaction.
April, 2018: Spring term begins. I'm teaching CS530 Developing User Interfaces (graduate course)
September, 2017: End of Summer Quarter. Check out some of the projects on the CS 530 (Developing User Interface) course blog
August, 2017: NSF-funded REThink Research Symposium showcases research conducted over the summer by Philadelphia area high school and community college teachers. Read article.
July, 2017: Two papers presented at the Neuroadaptive Technology Conference in Berlin: "User Identification from fNIRS Brain Data Using Deep Learning" with Denisa Qori McDonald and "Toward Neuroadaptive Personal Learning Environments" with Ruixue Liu and Erin Walker.
July, 2017: Paper with Pallavi Powale and Missy Cummings A field study of multimodal alerts for an autonomous threat detection system" presented at HCI International 2017.
June, 2017: Paper "Semantically far inspirations considered harmful? Accounting for cognitive states in collaborative ideation" with Joel Chan, Pao Siangliulue, Denisa Qori McDonald, Ruixue Liu, Reza Moradinezhad, Safa Aman, Krzysztof Gajos and Stephen Dow presented at Creativity & Cognition 2017 in Singapore [Slides]
June, 2017: Invited talk on "Enhancing Human Collaboration with Artificial Intelligence Systems Through Brain-Computer Interfaes" at the 2017 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics workshop on Human-Robot Interactions Applied to Health
June, 2017: Kickoff of the NSF-funded Research Experience for Teachers Site for Machine Learning to Enhance Human-Centered Computing. Check out Pat's and Gloria's websites about their projects in the Advanced Interaction Research Lab over the summer.
June, 2017: Welcome to visiting DREU undergraduate research assistants, Aria (Williams College) and Caitlin (Rowan Univeristy)
May, 2017: CHI 2017 Conference in Denver, CO.
April, 2017: Welcome to new undergraduate co-op research assistants: Anush, Jeremy, Juan and Weidi!
April, 2017: Two papers from our group have been accepted to the 1st Neuroadaptive Technology (NAT) conference: "User Identification from fNIRS Brain Data Using Deep Learning" with Denisa Qori McDonald and "Toward Neuroadaptive Personal Learning Environments" with Ruixue Liu and Erin Walker.
March, 2017: Our paper, "Mindful Shopping: A Compulsive Buying Disorder Management Tool." with Ruixue Liu and Gabriela Marcu accepted to ACM CHI 17 Workshop on Interactive Systems for Health.
March, 2017: Our paper, AgileFood: Facilitating Adaptive Food Donation to Address Hunger and Reduce Waste" with Denisa Qori McDonald accepted to ACM CHI 17 Workshop on Designing Sustainable Food Systems.
March, 2017: Our paper Semantically far inspirations considered harmful? Accounting for cognitive states in collaborative ideation" was accepted to ACM Creativity & Cognition 2017 conference (with Joel Chan, Pao Siangliulue, Denisa Qori McDonald, Reza Moradinezhad, Safa Aman, Krzysztof Gajos and Steven Dow).
March, 2017: Our paper, Integrating Brain and Physiological Sensing with Virtual Agents to Amplify Human Perception, with Reza Moradinezhad accepted to ACM CHI 17 Workshop on Amplification and Augmentation of Human Perception
February, 2017: We are now accepting applications for the 2017 Drexel REThink Project, a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Site in Engineering and Computer Science for Machine Learning to Enhance Human-Centered Computing. STEM and Computer Science high school teachers and 2-year college faculty in the Philadelphia Area are encouraged to apply for this program running this summer. Deadline: March 31
February, 2017: Our paper "Mental Health Markers in Language and Brain Data: Potential Diagnostic Use and Privacy Concerns" with Denisa Qori McDonald, Rachel Greenstadt and Girija Kaimal was accepted to the 2nd Symposium on Computing and Mental Health at the ACM CHI 2017 Conference in May.
February, 2017: Our paper "A field study of multimodal alerts for an autonomous threat detection system" was accepted to the 2017 HCI International Conference in July.  January, 2017: Joined program committee for ACM SIGCHI Conference on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems. Paper Abstracts Deadline: January 9.
December, 2016: End of Drexel Fall Quarter Check out some of the projects on the CS 338 (Graphical User Interface) course blog
December, 2016: CHI program committee meeting in Denver, CO.
November, 2016: Joined program committee for Neuroadaptive Technology Conference. Paper deadline: January 31, 2017.
November, 2016: Joined program committee for the 2017 NeuroIIR 2017 - CHIIR Workshop on Challenges in Bringing Neuroscience to Research in Human-Information Interaction. Paper submission deadline: January 12, 2017.
October, 2016: Our paper "Veneer: A Digital Visual Novel Game Exploring Player Empathy" (with Felicia Tucker, Chris Geib and Frank Lee) will be presented by Felicia at the Meaningful Play conference.
September, 2016: EXEL Magazine profiled my research: Driven to Distraction and it also appeared on the Drexel College of Computing & Informatics website
September, 2016: Joined program committee for ACM Creativity & Cognition 2017 conference. Call for participation, deadline January 6, 2017.
September, 2016: Beginning of Fall quarter. Teaching undergrad course: CS338 Graphical User Interfaces
August, 2016: STAR Scholars summer showcase - great job, Eni, Monica and Safa!
August, 2016: Invited talk at United Technology Research Center
July, 2016: Invited talk at Workshop on Collaborative Sensing, Learning, and Control in Human-Machine Systems at the American Control Conference
June, 2016: Start of the summer quarter. Welcome to our 3 STAR Scholars: Safa, Monica and Enioluwa!
June, 2016: End of the winter quarter. Check out some of the projects on the CS 530 (Developing User Interface) course blog
April, 2016: Joined ACM CHI conference program committee in the Engineering Interactive Systems subcommittee.
March, 2016: End of the winter quarter. Check out some of the projects on the CS 338 (Graphical User Interface) course blog
February, 2016: Late Breaking Work paper Toward Real-time Brain Sensing for Learning Assessment: Building a Rich Dataset accepted to CHI 2016, with Shelby Keating, Erin Walker and Anil Motupali
January, 2016: Paper accepted to CHI 2016 workshop on HCI and Autonomous Vehicles
January, 2016: Start of Winter term. I'm teaching CS 338: Graphical User Interfaces.
December, 2015: Travel to San Jose, CA for CHI 2016 Program Committee meeting
November, 2015: Our special issue of IEEE Computer on Physiological Computing, (co-edited with Stephen Fairclough and Giulio Jacucci) is published, including our editor introduction to Physiological Computing and a roundtable discussion by the editors, moderated by Robert Jacob.
November, 2015: Travel to Charlotte, NC for ACM UIST Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
October, 2015: Travel to Lisbon, Portugal to demo our ASL Clear project at ASSETS Conference
July, 2015: Our project "ASL CLeaR: STEM Education Tools for Deaf Students" (with Jeanne Reis, Bob Hoffmeister, Jon Henner and Kathleen Johnson) was July 20, 2015: Invited talk at NUI Central NY on Exploring Reality-Based Interactions and Brain-Computer Interfaces
June 23, 2015: Invited talk at Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics workshop on Brain Robot Interactions for Healthcare in London.
May, 2015: Drexel will lead human factors effort for new FAA Center for Excellence for UAS Research. More on this here
May, 2015: Our Interacting with Computers journal article "Investigating Mental Workload Changes in a Long Duration Supervisory Control Task" (with Mark Boyer, Missy Cummings, and Lee Spence) is published.
April, 2015: Joined the program committee for CHI 2016 on the Technology, Systems, and Engineering subcommittee. Call for papers here. Deadline September 25, 2015
April, 2015: Joined the program committee for Neuro-Physiological Methods in IR Research - a 2015 SIGIR Workshop. Call for participation is here. Deadline: May 4, 2015
April, 2015: Travel to Seoul, Korea for ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Presenting our paper "Designing Implicit Interfaces for Physiological Computing: Guidelines and Lessons Learned using fNIRS" (with Dan Afergan, Evan Peck, Sam Hincks, Robert Jacob)
April, 2015: Participating in ACM CHI Workshop on Experiencing Autonomous Vehicles: Crossing the Boundaries between a Drive and a Ride and presenting paper "Enabling Adaptive Autonomy: Brain & Body Sensing for Adaptive Vehicles" (with Dan Afergan, Daniel Belyusar, Arudra Venkat, Bruce Mehler, and Bryan Reimer)
March, 2015: End of the Drexel Winter Term. Check out the CS 338 (Graphical User Interface) course blog!
March, 2015: Paper on "Investigating Mental Workload Changes in a Long Duration Supervisory Control Task" (with Mark Boyer, Lee Spence, and Missy Cummings) was accepted to Interacting With Computing Journal.
March 9 and 11, 2015: CS 338 (Graphical User Interfaces) Final Project Demos
March, 2015: Our paper "Augmenting Spatial Skills with Semi-Immersive Interactive Desktop Displays: Do Immersion Cues Matter?" (with Orit Shaer, Johanna Okerlund, Cassie Hoef, and Jasmine Davis) will be presented at Augmented Human 2015 in Singapore.
February, 2015: Program committee for the International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction. To submit a paper, see the Call for Contributions, Deadline: May 25
February 25, 2015: Talk at Drexel Neuroscience Society
January, 2015: Editing a special issue of IEEE Computer on Physiological Computing. Call for participation here. Deadline: April 1, 2015. Publish date: October, 2015
January, 2015: Our journal article "Designing Implicit Interfaces for Physiological Computing: Guidelines and Lessons Learned using fNIRS" (with Daniel Afergan, Evan Peck, Samuel Hincks, and Robert Jacob) published in ToCHI: Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
January, 2015: Start teaching CS338 (Graphical User Interfaces
December, 2014: End of the quarter. See some of the fantastic projects on the CS 530 (Developing User Interfaces) course blog.
Fall, 2014: Joined the editorial board for the International Journal of Human-Computer Systems (IJHCS)
November 18, 2014: Our poster "Utilizing functional near-infrared spectroscopy to identify cognitive processes contributing to workload in a dual-task environment" (with Daniel Belyusar, Bryan Reimer, Bruce Mehler, Dan Afergan, and Joe Coughlin) will be presented at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
October, 2014: Workshops Committee for the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). To submit a workshop proposal, see the Call for Workshops, Deadline: October 8
October, 2014: Our poster "An In-Depth Look at the Benefits of Immersion Cues on Spatial 3D Problem Solving" (with Cassie Hoef, Jasmine Davis and Orit Shaer) will be presented at the ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interfaces (SUI) in Honolulu, HI.
July 2014: Program committee for the ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI). To submit a paper, see the Call for Papers, Deadline: August 8 (extended from Aug 1)
July 2014: Program committee for the International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction. To submit a paper, see the Call for Contributions, Deadline: July 10
July 2014: Talk at Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2014
July 9, 2014: Presentation for Drexel REThink summer institute in computer science for STEM high school teachers and 2-year college faculty.
June 2014: HCIC 2014 in Watsonville, CA
May 2014: DC for meetings
April 2014: Toronto for CHI 2014
March 2014: Drexel Spring Term starts. First lecture in CS 680 Brain Computer Interaction
March 2014: Added video previews for CHI 2014 papers: here and here
March, 2014: End of the quarter. See some of the fantastic projects on the CS338 (Graphical User Interfaces) blog
March, 2014: Our paper "Modeling Teamwork in Supervisory Control of Multiple Robots" (with Fei Gao and Missy Cummings) was accepted to be published in IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
February, 2014: Both CHI 2014 papers (linked below) received a Best Paper Award Honorable Mention for being in the top 5% of paper submissions.
January 6, 2014: Drexel classes start. First lecture in CS 338 Graphical User Interfaces
December 8, 2013: Our papers "Classifying Driver Workload Using Physiological and Driving Performance Data: Two Field Studies" and "Dynamic Difficulty Using Brain Metrics of Workload" were accepted to ACM CHI 2014 conference
December 7-8, 2013: ACM CHI Program Committee Meeting at University of Toronto
December 6, 2013: Talk at University of Toronto in Mechanical Engineering Building, Room 331 at 4pm
October 29, 2013: Guest lecture at Wellesley College in CS320: Tangible User Interfaces and visit to HCI Lab
October 24-25, 2013: Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Course at Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
September 9, 2013: Drexel announces new College of Computing of Informatics
September, 2013: Joined Drexel Department of Computing as Assistant Professor
May, 2013: On the "Caps and Mods" subcommittee of the ACM CHI 2014 conference program committee again. Paper deadline: Sep 18
April, 2013: On the Associate Program Committee for SIGCHI conference on Tangible, Embodied and Embedded Interaction (TEI 2014) in Munich, February 16-19, 2014. Paper deadline: August 1
April, 2013: Our paper "Investigating the Efficacy of Network Visualizations for Intelligence Tasks" was accepted to the Cybersecurity Visualization workshop at IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference to be held in June in Seattle.
April 29-May 2: Paris for CHI 2013
April 28, 2013: Organizing CHI 2013 Workshop: Many people, many eyes: Aggregating Influences of Visual Perception on User Interface Design
April 5-6, 2013: Speaker at 2013 CRA-W Graduate Cohort Workshop
March 4, 2013: Giving talk at the Boston Chapter of IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology: Can Computers Read Our Minds? Real-Time Brain Input for Interactive Systems
March 1, 2013: Lightning Talk at Google Cambridge PhD Summit
Feb 28, 2013: SMARTS MURI annual meeting at MIT
Feb 2013: Talked with New Scientist about fNIRS brain sensing and driving
Feb 2013: Judging the Harvard College Innovation Challenge (I3) competition
Dec 2012: Talk at John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
Dec 2012: Talk at MIT Day of Autonomy
Dec 2012: Paris for CHI 2013 Program Committee meeting
Dec 2012: Talk in Personal Robotics group's speaker series at MIT Media Lab
Nov 2012: Interactive Tabletop and Surfaces conference in Cambridge, MA
Fall 2012: On the program committee for ACM SIGCHI Conference on Tangible, Embedded, Embodied Interaction (TEI 2013)

Oct 2012: Talk in MIT Humans and Automation Lab seminar
Oct 2012: Our paper "Using Variable-Rate Alerting to Counter Boredom in Human Supervisory Control" will be presented at Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting in Boston, MA
Oct 2012: Presenting poster "Brain Sensing with fNIRS in the Car" at Auto User Interface conference in Portsmouth, NH
Oct 2012: Presenting poster "Collision Avoidance Interface for Safe Piloting of Unmanned Vehicles using a Mobile Device" at UIST 2012 in Cambridge, MA
June 2012: National Institute of Justice Conference poster presented
May 14, 2012: Technology Review article: "A Computer Interface that Takes a Load Off Your Mind" about my research and another article: "MIT's Brainput boosts your brain power by offloading multitasking to a computer"
May, 2012: Our paper: "Using Variable-Rate Alerting to Counter Boredom in Human Supervisory Control" was accepted to be presented at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society conference in October.
April 2012: My paper is a Best Paper Award Nominee at CHI 2012.
April, 2, 2012: Article about research with State Police. “CSAIL scientists, Mass State Police to tackle problem of roadside collisions between drivers and police vehicles”
March 15, 2012: Talk at Brown Computer Science Department.
March 13, 2012: Talk at Boston CHI at IBM Center for Social Business, 1 Rogers Street Cambridge
February, 2012: I'll once again be a judge for the Harvard I3 Innovation Challenge.
February, 2012: I'll be teaching a seminar course this semester at MIT on Human Values in Technology(Course 16).
January, 2012: My paper "Real-time fNIRS Brain Input for Adaptive Robot Autonomy" was accepted into the HRI Pioneers Workshop at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Boston in March.
January, 2012: posted link to final CHI 2012 paper
December, 2011: My paper "Brainput: Enhancing Interactive Systems with Streaming fNIRS Brain Input"was accepted to the CHI 2012 conference in Austin, Texas in May.
November 1, 2011: Join MIT Humans and Automation Lab as a Computing Innovation Fellow
October, 2011: Dissertation Defense!
October, 2011: Providence, RI for Visweek. Poster: Near to the Brain: Functional 
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy as a Lightweight Brain Imaging Technique for Visualization - Awarded Best Poster!
August 2011: Awarded Computing Innovation Fellowship
May 8-12: Vancouver, BC for CHI 2011 and Brain and Body Interfaces: Designing for Meaningful Interaction workshop
==> Presented: Sensing Cognitive Multitasking for a Brain-Based Adaptive User Interface
==> Presented: Meaningful Human-Computer Interaction Using fNIRS Brain Sensing
April 26, 2011: Practice CHI talks at Microsoft NERD http://www.bostonchilabs.org
April 12, 2011: Guest Lecture in MIT EECS Intelligent Multimodal User Interfaces course
February, 2011: My paper "Meaningful Human-Computer Interaction Using fNIRS Brain Sensing" was accepted to the CHI 2011 Workshop on Brain and Body Interfaces: Designing for Meaningful Interaction
December, 2010: My paper “Sensing Cognitive Multitasking for a Brain-Based Adaptive User Interface"was accepted to appear at CHI 2011 in Vancouver in May.
December 29, 2010: Jaclyn's little sister, Kailah Liat Solovey, was born.
October 15-17, 2010: Presenting a poster at fNIRS Conference at Harvard
September 24, 2010: Post CHI deadline drinks at John Havard's in Harvard Square http://bostonchilabs.org/
July 22, 2010: Talk at Human & Automation Lab at MIT
June, 2010: Our International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems article is in press: Designing a Passive Brain Computer Interface using Real Time Classification of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
June, 2010: The debut of the new ACM XRDS magazine was published, including our article: From Brains to Bytes
May 12, 2010: Boston CHI labs joint event with BostonCHI, 6:30-9pm, ground floor of 33 Oxford St at Harvard: a talk by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg on Social Data Visualization.
April 10-14, 2010: Atlanta, GA for CHI 2010 and Brain, Body and Bytes: Psychophysiological User Interaction workshop
April 7, 2010: Pre-CHI BostonCHI Labs bash
Thursday, January 28 at 7pm: CHI Bar! Hang out, eat, drink, and meet other HCI researchers and students atMuddy Charles Pub at MIT (moved from Cambridge Brewing Company because of an event taking place there).
January 6, 2010: Deadline for submissions to CHI2010 workshop: Brain, Body and Bytes: Psychophysiological User Interaction
December, 2009: BostonCHI Labs (our new alliance of Boston area HCI researchers) has a website!
December 4, 2009: Guest speaker at Wellesley College course on Tangible User Interfaces
November 11, 2009: BostonCHI Labs - 1-minute "Madness" and Dinner 6pm, Admiral Grace Hopper Room, Maxwell-Dworkin building at Harvard University
October 12-13 2009: Bay Area for talk at "When Everything is Programmable" conference at the Institute for the Future
October 3-8 2009: Victoria, BC for UIST conference
    ⇒ Presented: Using fNIRS Brain Sensing in Realistic HCI Settings: Experiments and Guidelines
    ⇒ Presented in Doctoral Symposium: Using Your Brain for Human-Computer Interaction
July 2009: Finally updated my website!
July 2009: New EEG system arrives in our lab
May 19, 2009: Became a mommy to Jaclyn Ruhama Solovey.
April 2009: Our "CHIstory" video won the Golden Mouse award for Most Entertaining in the CHI 2009 video showcase. Check it out on YouTube and on the FXPAL blog.
April 2009: Presented workshop paper at CHI 2009 Workshop on Programming Reality: From Transitive Materials to Organic User Interfaces
    ⇒Programming Reality within the Reality-Based Interaction Framework
April 2009: Student volunteer at CHI 2009
April 2009: Coauthor of paper presented at CHI 2009
    ⇒ Brain Measurement for Usability Testing and Adaptive Interfaces: An Example of Uncovering Syntactic Workload with Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy
April 2009: Coauthor of paper presented at CHI 2009
    ⇒ Comparing the Use of Tangible and Graphical Programming Languages for Informal Science Education
March 2009: Guest Lecture "Using your brain for HCI" in MAS 672 - New Paradigms for Human-Computer Interaction at MIT Media Lab