News & Events

Dr. Jonathan Gratch is the Associate Director for Virtual Humans Research at University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technology and a research associate professor in USC’s computer science department. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Illinois in Urban-Champaign in 1995 with a focus on machine learning, planning and cognitive science. His research addresses the creation of virtual humans (artificially intelligent agents embodied in a human-like graphical body) and cognitive modeling.

Kenneth R. Koedinger is a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He has a MS in Computer Science (University of Wisconsin, 1986) and a PhD in Psychology (CMU, 1990). He has authored over 200 papers and has won over 30 major grants. He directs the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (see LearnLab.org) and is a co-founder of Carnegie Learning, a company marketing advanced educational technology.

Daniel Epstein is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science. His work examines how personal tracking technology can acknowledge and account for the realities of everyday life, designing new technology and studying people's use of current technology. Daniel's work has been published in top HCI venues including CHI, Ubicomp, CSCW, and DIS, receiving multiple awards and nominations. He received his Ph.D.

Karen Locke, Ph.D., is W. Brooks George Professor of Business Administration at the College of William and Mary’s school of business. She joined the faculty there in 1989 after earning her Ph. D. in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Locke’s work focuses on developing a sociology of knowledge in organizational studies and on the use of qualitative research for the investigation of organizational phenomena.

Dr. Danny Pimentel is an Assistant Professor of Immersive Media Psychology at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication in Portland. His research primarily focuses on the prosocial and proenvironmental implications of immersive storytelling through extended reality (XR) platforms: virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR).

Janaki Kumar is a Senior Director of User Experience at SAP Labs Palo Alto. She leads a team of interaction designers who work on business applications relating to sustainability, cloud based customer relationship management, customer service and social as well as other design led innovation projects. She became interested in gamification a few years ago when working on sustainability. Gamification provided a fun way to motivate and encourage ongoing employee engagement in sustainability initiatives. Since then, she has explored introducing gamification in other business areas.

Nick Seaver is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Tufts University in Medford, MA. His ethnographic research on the developers of algorithmic music recommendation has appeared in Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Big Data & Society. He is co-editor of Towards an Anthropology of Data (2021) and author of Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation (2022). 

Jon Kleinberg is the Tisch University Professor, Computer Science Department, at Cornell University. His research focuses on issues at the interface of networks and information, with an emphasis on the social and information networks that underpin the Web and other on-line media.

Neil is an authentic, funny and talented speaker from his days as a senior executive with Pittsburgh-based investment advisory firm Hefren-Tillotson, Inc. Since his diagnosis in 2011, he has spoken at numerous corporate, private and community events regarding gratitude and the challenges of facing a serious health crisis. Neil and Suzanne Alexander founded LiveLikeLou.org, a donor advised fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation, shortly after Neil’s diagnosis with ALS in 2011.

Krzysztof Gajos is an associate professor of Computer Science at the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Krzysztof is broadly interested in intelligent interactive systems, a research area that bridges artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Recent projects pursued by his group contributed to diverse areas such as personalized adaptive user interfaces, systems for supporting collective creativity, organic crowdsourcing, large-scale experimentation in the wild, and learning technologies.

Tovi Grossman is a Distinguished Research Scientist at Autodesk Research, located in downtown Toronto. Dr. Grossman’s research is in HCI, focusing on input and interaction with new technologies. In particular, he has been exploring how emerging technologies, such as wearables, the Internet of Things, and gamification can be leveraged to enhance learning and knowledge sharing for both software applications and real-world physical tasks. This work has led to a number of technologies now in Autodesk products used by millions of users, such as Autodesk Screencast and Autodesk ToolClip™ videos.