Abstract 
Diversity in datasets is a key component to building responsible AI/ML. Despite this recognition, we know little about the diversity among the annotators involved in data production. Additionally, despite being an indispensable part of AI, data annotation work is often cast as simple, standardized and even low-skilled work. In this talk, I present a series of studies that aim at unpacking the data annotation process with an emphasis on the data worker who lifts the weight of data production. This includes interview studies to uncover both the data annotator’s perspective of their work and the data requestor’s approach to the diversity and subjectivity the workers bring; an ethnographic investigation in data centers to study the work practices around data annotation; a mixed methods study to explore the impact of worker demographic diversity on the data they annotate. While practitioners described nuanced understandings of annotator diversity, they rarely designed dataset production to account for diversity in the annotation process. This calls for more attention to a pervasive logic of representationalist thinking and counting that is intricately woven into the day to day work practices of annotation. In examining structure in which the annotation is done and the diversity is seen, this talk aims to recover annotation and diversity from its reductive framing and seek alternative approaches to knowing and doing annotation. 

Bio  
Ding Wang is a senior researcher at Google Research, her current research focus is to explore the intersection of HCI and AI, specifically the labour involved in production of data and its impact on AI systems subsequently. Prior to joining Google, Ding completed her postdoc research from Microsoft Research India, where her research projects focused on the future of work and health care. Prior to joining MSR, Ding has completed her PhD from HighWire Centre for Doctoral Training in Lancaster University and her doctoral thesis offers a critical/alternative view on how smart cities should be designed, developed and evaluated. 

Date: 2/1/2024 12:30 pm (12:00 lunch)

Location: 
Technology Square Research Building (TSRB, 1st Floor Ballroom)
85 Fifth Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30308

ABSTRACT
We are at a transformational junction in computing, in the midst of an explosion in capabilities of foundational AI models that may soon match or exceed typical human abilities for a wide variety of cognitive tasks, a milestone often termed Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Achieving AGI (or even closely approaching it) will transform computing, with ramifications permeating through all aspects of society. This is a critical moment not only for Machine Learning research, but also for the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). 

In this talk, I will define what I mean (and what I do NOT mean) by “AGI," and my journey from AGI skeptic to believing we are within five to ten years of reaching this milestone. I will then discuss how this new era of computing necessitates a new sociotechnical research agenda on methods and interfaces for studying and interacting with AGI. For instance, how can we extend status quo design and prototyping methods for envisioning novel experiences at the limits of our current imaginations? What novel interaction modalities might AGI (or superintelligence) enable? How do we create interfaces for computing systems that may intentionally or unintentionally deceive an end-user? How do we bridge the “gulf of evaluation” when a system may arrive at an answer through methods that fundamentally differ from human mental models, or that may be too complex for an individual user to grasp? How do we evaluate technologies that may have unanticipated systemic side-effects on society when released into the wild? 

I will close by reflecting on the relationship between HCI and AI research. Typically, HCI and other sociotechnical domains are not considered as core to the ML research community as areas like model building. However, I argue that research on Human-AI Interaction and the societal impacts of AI is vital and central to this moment in computing history. HCI must not become a “second class citizen” to AI, but rather be recognized as fundamental to ensuring the path to AGI and beyond is a beneficial one.

BIO
Meredith Ringel Morris is Director for Human-AI Interaction Research at Google DeepMind. Prior to joining DeepMind, she was Director of the People + AI Research team in Google Research’s Responsible AI division. She also previously served as Research Area Manager for Interaction, Accessibility, and Mixed Reality at Microsoft Research. In addition to her industry role, Dr. Morris has a faculty appointment at the University of Washington, where she is an Affiliate Professor in The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and also in The Information School. Dr. Morris has been recognized as a Fellow of the ACM and as a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy for her contributions to Human-Computer Interaction research. She earned her Sc.B. in computer science from Brown University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. More details on her research and publications are available at http://merrie.info. 

This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Interactive Computing and the Institute for People and Technology.

BIO
Dr. Oliver Haimson is an Assistant Professor at University of Michigan School of Information and a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award. He conducts social computing research focused on envisioning and designing trans technologies, social media content moderation and marginalized populations, and changing identities on social media during life transitions. Much of his research has focused on transgender identities and experiences online and with social technologies, and his research goal is to impact technological inclusion of marginalized users.

Casey Fiesler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Science
University of Colorado Boulder

ABSTRACT
Hardly a day passes without a new technology ethics scandal in the news — from privacy violations on social media to biased algorithms to controversial data collection practices. In computing practice and research, good intentions sometimes still lead to negative consequences. So what can we do as technologists, researchers, and educators? This talk describes three lessons from my research that inform ethical practices in studying, building, and teaching about technology: (1) remembering the humans present in data, towards ethical research practices; (2) unpacking ethical debt (as a parallel to technical debt) in technology design and research as the precursor to the types of unintended consequences that underly many controversies; and (3) a broader perspective on computing education that puts thoughtful critique of technology in everyone’s hands. 

BIO
Casey Fiesler is an Associate Professor of Information Science (and Computer Science by courtesy) at University of Colorado Boulder. She researches and teaches in the areas of technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities. Her work on research ethics for data science, ethics education in computing, and broadening participation in computing has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and she is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award. Also a public scholar, she is a frequent commentator and speaker on topics of technology ethics and policy, and her research has been covered everywhere from The New York Times to Teen Vogue (though she’s particularly proud of her TikToks). She is a three-time alum of Georgia Tech, and in addition to her PhD in Human-Centered Computing, she also holds a JD from Vanderbilt Law School.

This lecture is sponsored by the Institute for People and Technology & the School of Interactive Computing (IC).

About the CIC
The Convergence Innovation Competition (CIC) is dedicated to helping students create and showcase innovative and viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. CIC categories are determined by community and industry partners. Winning entries will include a viable end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, and/or platforms. CIC entries can be based on class projects, student research projects, as well as personal hobbies and interests.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a monetary prize for participating.

This event celebrates Georgia Tech book publications, showcasing the range and depth of scholarship on our campus. The 2024 event honors authors and editors who have published books between January 2022 and December 2023. 

Foad Hamidi

Assistant Professor
Information Systems Department
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Speaker: Stefanos Nikolaidis, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California

Date: 2023-11-09 12:30 pm

Location: 
Technology Square Research Building (TSRB, 1st Floor Ballroom)
85 Fifth Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30308

ABSTRACT
The advent of state-of-the-art machine learning models and complex human-robot interaction systems has been accompanied by an increasing need for the efficient generation of diverse and challenging scenarios to test these systems.

In this talk, I will formalize the problem of algorithmic scenario generation and propose a general framework for searching, generating, and evaluating simulated scenarios. I will first discuss our fundamental advances in quality diversity optimization algorithms that search the continuous, multi-dimensional scenario space. I will then show how integrating quality diversity algorithms with generative models allows for the generation of realistic scenarios. Instead of performing expensive evaluations for every single generated scenario in a robotic simulator, I will discuss combining the scenario search with the self-supervised learning of surrogate models that predict human-robot interaction outcomes. Finally, I will introduce the notion of 'soft archives' for registering the generated scenarios, which significantly improves performance in hard-to-optimize domains.

While the talk will focus on scenario generation, the proposed framework is general and can be applied to a wide range of applications where diverse datasets are desirable. I will conclude the talk by discussing applications in searching for diverse faces, robot locomotion policies, and warehouse layouts.

BIO
Stefanos Nikolaidis is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and the Fluor Early Career Chair at the University of Southern California, where he leads the Interactive and Collaborative Autonomous Robotics Systems (ICAROS) lab. His research draws upon expertise on artificial intelligence, procedural content generation and quality diversity optimization and leads to end-to-end solutions that enable deployed robotic systems to act robustly when interacting with people in practical, real-world applications. Stefanos completed his PhD at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and received an MS from MIT, a MEng from the University of Tokyo and a BS from the National Technical University of Athens. In 2022, Stefanos was the sole recipient of the Agilent Early Career Professor Award for his work on human-robot collaboration, as well as the recipient of an NSF CAREER award for his work on “Enhancing the Robustness of Human-Robot Interactions via Automatic Scenario Generation.” His research has also been recognized with  best paper awards and nominations from the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, and the International Symposium on Robotics.

Livestream available during the talk found here:
https://research.gatech.edu/ipat/gvu-brown-bag-lunch

Title: Augment, Diminish, Remap Reality: Freeing the Mind and its Resources

Abstract:
Our senses and minds construct our reality. Both are inherently limited and we naturally seek tools to improve our experiences. Anyone who covers their ears as a siren roars past, turns on closed captions, or dons sunglasses on a bright day has altered ‘reality.’ As technology advances, we can also control reality with cutting-edge extended reality (XR) technologies, which add to, subtract from, and remap sounds and visuals in our world. This presentation will cover the perceptual and mental processes underlying XR cognition aids, with methods of testing the effectiveness of these aids, current domains of inquiry, and results from several laboratory experiments on how altering visual and auditory reality can improve a person’s performance and experience.

Bio:
Anne Collins McLaughlin (MS, PhD Engineering Psychology, 2007) is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at North Carolina State University. She has received awards for her teaching and research from NC State and was chosen as a Faculty Scholar in 2016. Her work has been funded by NSF, NASA, NIH, and other organizations. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She has been the President of Division 21 of the American Psychological Association and was an Associate Editor for the journal Human Factors, the flagship journal of the field from 2018-2022. She co-authored a book for practitioners wishing to design technologies for older persons, Designing Displays for Older Adults. She has also recently published a book introducing human factors psychology to the general public, All Too Human. Her current research focuses on the design and use of cognition aids to improve performance and learning of challenging tasks. When she’s not thinking about that next research project, she loves rock climbing and teaching other women to do the same.

Speaker: Mengyao Li, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech

Date: 2023-10-12 12:30 pm

Location: 
Technology Square Research Building (TSRB, 1st Floor Ballroom)
85 Fifth Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30308

ABSTRACT
Artificial Intelligence (AI), with its increasing capability and connectivity, extends beyond limited and well-defined contexts and is integrated into broader societal domains. AI algorithms now steer autonomous vehicle fleets, shape political beliefs through news filtering, and oversee resource allocation and labor. Establishing trust between humans and their AI counterparts becomes important to facilitate effective cooperation. Trust profoundly influences how individuals use, communicate with, and collaborate alongside AI systems. Thus, trust measurement and management within human-AI cooperation are indispensable for ensuring safety, efficiency, and overall success. This talk focuses on trust in human-AI interactions, addressing three primary questions: (1) How can we measure people’s trust in human-AI conversations? (2) How does trust change over time within human-AI conversations? (3) How can we effectively manage instances of overtrust or undertrust through conversational cues to enhance human-AI cooperation? This talk highlights critical advancements in measurement of trust dynamics in human-AI cooperation, promising to influence the future of AI integration into broader societal domains.

BIO
Mengyao Li an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial & System Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She directs the Hybrid Intelligence Lab (HI lab), which explores the interaction of human and machine intelligence. Her research is concentrated on understanding, predicting, and shaping human-AI communication, social cooperation, and the long-term coevolution within safety-critical environments.

As part of the Convergence Innovation Competition, a panel of industry and campus partners will review teams’ submission materials virtually.  

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

Date: 2023-10-05 12:30 pm

Location: 
Technology Square Research Building (TSRB, 1st Floor Ballroom)
85 Fifth Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30308

ABSTRACT:
The Humanitarian Engineering (HE) program at the Colorado School of Mines (Mines) has been transforming what it means to be an engineer by, among other things, integrating social justice into the engineering curriculum, including its humanities/social science courses, design projects, and, perhaps more importantly, its engineering science core. The HE program has challenged engineering faculty and students to re-think “what counts as engineering” by considering areas historically unattended by engineering (e.g., homelessness, immigrants, indigenous populations, low-wage workers, etc.) as worthy of engineering problem definition and solution. Dr. Lucena will share the Mines experience in rendering social justice visible throughout the engineering curriculum without compromising its integrity. He will focus on the different spaces within and around engineering curricula where integration can occur.

BIO:
Juan is Professor and Director of Humanitarian Engineering (HE) Undergraduate Programs at the Colorado School of Mines. Juan obtained a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech and two BS in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His books include Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (with Jen Schneider and Jon Leydens, Morgan & Claypool, 2010), Engineering Education for Social Justice: Critical Explorations and Opportunities (Springer, 2013), and Engineering Justice: Transforming Engineering Education and Practice (with Jon Leydens, IEEE-Wiley, 2017). As an engineering student, he learned the strengths and limitations of engineering assumptions and methods for engaging communities, particularly those historically neglected by engineering. He has dedicated his career to educate and study engineers to view engineering education and practice as sites for important societal change that can be studied and transformed for the wellbeing of communities, social justice, and sustainability. The main driver for his teaching and research is to challenge students to ask, what is engineering for?

Date: 2023-09-28 12:30 pm

Location: 
Technology Square Research Building (TSRB, 1st Floor Ballroom)
85 Fifth Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30308

ABSTRACT
Mobile augmented reality (AR), which integrates virtual objects with 3D real environments in real time, has been showing outstanding potential in many application areas including education, retail, and healthcare. AR is broadly expected to redefine how we interact with the world around us. Yet current AR falls short of many of the expectations. This talk presents our vision of multi-device, edge computing-supported and Internet-of-Things (IoT)-integrated architectures for next-generation intelligent context-adaptive AR. The talk describes shortcomings in modern AR’s semantic and spatial awareness capabilities and identifies key research gaps that need to be addressed to enable AR to become robust and resource-efficient; we discuss solutions to some of the key challenges, based on the advances in edge computing, machine learning, and resource-efficient simultaneous localization and mapping. The talk also highlights the opportunities associated with the close integration of AR platforms and their users, and describes how integrated multi-device architectures can improve user context awareness in AR. The talk showcases several applications of next-generation context-aware AR, including AR in surgery and mental health.  
 
This talk is based on research that appeared in ACM SenSys, IEEE ISMAR, ACM IMWUT, IEEE INFOCOM, and IEEE/ACM IPSN.  

BIO
Dr. Maria Gorlatova is a Nortel Networks Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Duke University. Her research is in emerging pervasive technologies, with a particular focus on next-generation augmented reality and the Internet of Things. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. (Summa Cum Laude) degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Ottawa, Canada. She spent two years at Princeton University Electrical Engineering Department as an Associate Research Scholar and an Associate Director of the Princeton University EDGE Lab. Dr. Gorlatova was named among the 10 N2Women Rising Stars in 2019, and has received multiple awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Facebook Research Award, CISCO Research Award, ACM SenSys Best Student Demonstration Award, IEEE/ACM IPSN Best Research Artifact Award, Google Anita Borg Fellowship, the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Young Author Best Paper Award, and the IEEE ComSoc Award for Advances in Communications. 

ABSTRACT
New advances in robotics and autonomy offer a promise of revitalizing final assembly manufacturing, assisting in personalized at-home healthcare, and even scaling the power of earth-bound scientists for robotic space exploration. Yet, in real-world applications, autonomy is often run in the O-F-F mode because researchers fail to understand the human in human-in-the-loop systems. In this talk, I will share exciting research we are conducting at the nexus of human factors engineering and cognitive robotics to inform the design of human-robot interaction. In my talk, I will focus on our recent work on 1) enabling machines to learn skills from and model heterogeneous, suboptimal human decision-makers, 2) “white-box” that knowledge through explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques, and 3) scale to coordinated control of stochastic human-robot teams. The goal of this research is to inform the design of autonomous teammates so that users want to turn – and benefit from turning – to the O-N mode.

BIO
Dr. Matthew Gombolay is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was named the Anne and Alan Taetle Early-career Assistant Professor in 2018. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 2011, an S.M. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2013, and a Ph.D. in Autonomous Systems from MIT in 2017. Gombolay’s research interests span robotics, AI/ML, human-robot interaction, and operations research. Between defending his dissertation and joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Dr. Gombolay served as technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, transitioning his research to the U.S. Navy and earning a R&D 100 Award. His publication record includes a best paper award from the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and the ACM/IEEE Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’22) as well as finalist awards for the best paper at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL’20) and Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS’23) and best student paper at the American Controls Conference (ACC’20). Dr Gombolay was selected as a DARPA Riser in 2018, received the Early Career Award from the National Fire Control Symposium, and was awarded a NASA Early Career Fellowship.

ABSTRACT
What would it mean if we could select any part (shape) of a CAD model and use it to find (⌘F) all its geometrical instances in the model (or other CAD models for that matter) – same size, larger, smaller, rotated, reflected or transformed in some way? What would it mean if we could edit this part and use it to replace (⌘R) all its geometrical instances in the model? Why is that the Find and Replace (⌘F/⌘R) operations that are so essential in Word or Excel have yet to be implemented in CAD? And what would happen if we could seamlessly use these shape-based Find and Replace (⌘F/⌘R) operations in a logical processing framework using states, loops, jumps and conditionals to literally write programming code by drawing shapes? How would this affect our current view of computation and what would it mean for design? The talk discusses the current state of the Shape Machine, a shape-rewrite computational system that features shape-based Find and Replace (⌘F/⌘R) operations for lines and arcs in 2D vector graphics and a logical processing framework including familiar control flow constructs (looping and branching), to allow write programming code by drawing shapes. Shape Machine is developed at the Shape Computation Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology and currently is integrated within Rhinoceros, a NURBS 2D/3D CAD software. Several applications drawn from architectural design, industrial design, game design, circuit design, mathematics and other fields showcase the potential impact of this new technology in various domains. https://shape.gatech.edu/

BIO
Athanassios (Thanos) Economou is a Professor at the School of Architecture in the College of Design and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou’s teaching and research are in shape grammars, computational design, computer-aided design, and design theory, with over sixty published papers in these areas. He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab, a research group that explores how the visual nature of shape can be formally implemented with new technologies to enable new paradigms in CAD, design automation, visual scripting, and creative design. Recent projects include the Shape Machine, a new computational technology that allows shape embedding in CAD systems, funded by Georgia Research Alliance and NSF-iCorps Sites, and the Courtsweb, the most significant visual database on Federal Courthouses, funded by GSA and US.Courts. Design projects from his studios at Georgia Tech have received prestigious awards in international and national architectural competitions. He has been invited to give talks, seminars, and workshops at several universities including MIT, Harvard, TU Vienna, U. Michigan, KAIST, Chiao Tung U Taiwan, Emory, Seoul National U, Cambridge U, Tsinghua U, UCLA, NTUA, U.Thessaly, U.Aegean, among others. Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture from NTUA, Athens, Greece, an M.Arch from USC, and a PhD in Architecture from UCLA.

ABSTRACT
While decades of AI research on high-level reasoning have yielded many techniques for many tasks, we are still quite far from having artificial agents that can just “sit down" and perform tasks like intelligence tests without highly specialized algorithms or training regimes.  We also know relatively little about how and why different people approach reasoning tasks in different (often equally successful) ways, including in neurodivergent conditions such as autism. In this talk, I will discuss: 1) my lab's work on AI approaches for reasoning with visual imagery to solve intelligence tests, and what these findings suggest about visual cognition in autism; 2) how imagery-based agents might learn their domain knowledge and problem-solving strategies via search and experience, instead of these components being manually designed, including recent leaderboard results on the very difficult Abstraction & Reasoning Corpus (ARC) ARCathon challenge; and 3) how this research can help us understand cognitive strategy differences in people, with applications related to neurodiversity and employment.

BIO
Maithilee Kunda is an assistant professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University. Her work in AI, in the area of cognitive systems, looks at how visual thinking contributes to learning and intelligent behavior, with a focus on applications related to autism and neurodiversity. She directs Vanderbilt’s Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Visual Analogical Systems and is a founding investigator in Vanderbilt’s Frist Center for Autism & Innovation. She has published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (JADD), the premier journal for autism research, as well as in AI and cognitive science conferences such as ACS, CogSci, AAAI, ICDL-EPIROB, and DIAGRAMS, including a best paper award at the ACS conference in 2020.  Also in 2020, her research on innovative methods for cognitive assessment was featured on CBS 60 Minutes, as part of a segment on neurodiversity and the workforce, and in 2022, her work on a new educational computer game for middle school students on the autism spectrum was featured in the New York Times, in a piece on AI and special education. She holds a B.S. in mathematics with computer science from MIT and Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech.

Please register and join us for an Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) sponsored campus event focused on people and technology -- past and present. This campus event kicks off with a GVU Brown Bag lecture presented by IPaT's new executive director, Michael Best. His talk is titled, "Considering IPaT: celebrating the past and inventing the future." After the lecture, IPaT will offer lab tours, a panel discussion featuring distinguished members of the Georgia Tech community in a continuing discussion about people and technology, ending with a beverage and food reception. The event will be held in the Technology Square Research Building (TSRB), 1st floor on Thursday, August 24 starting at 12:00 PM with the Brown Bag lunch.

Details of the event can be found here: https://research.gatech.edu/considering-people-and-technology

You're invited! Please register here >>

Panelists participating at 3:00pm: (pictured above, clockwise):
* Margarita Gonzalez, Principal Researcher and Senior Technologist for Digital Innovation (GTRI-ICL)
* General “Phil” Breedlove, Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe and distinguished professor, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
* Ruthie Yow, Service learning and partnerships specialist, Serve-Learn-Sustain
* Tansu Celikel, Chair of the School of Psychology, College of Sciences
* Kirk Bowman, Regents’ entrepreneur and professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
* Lisa Marks, Assistant professor, School of Industrial Design
* Matthew Gombolay, Assistant professor, School of Interactive Computing
* Sabir Khan, Associate professor, School of Architecture

Maribeth Gandy Coleman, director of IPaT research will serve as the moderator for the 3:00pm panel discussion. Julia Kubanek, vice president for interdisciplinary research, will deliver the event's closing remarks. Pictured at left
is Michael Best, executive director of the Institute for People and Technology, who is presenting the Brown Bag lecture at 12:30 pm.

You'll see research themes that range from AI, augmented reality, civic computing, cognitive science, educational technologies, gaming, graphics and visualization, health informatics, human-computer interaction, mobile and ubiquitous computing, music technology, robotics, wearable tech, social computing, and other areas.

You're invited to meet some of Georgia Tech's top research talent from more than 20 labs in the GVU community and experience their latest innovations

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

Topics for upcoming sessions:

March 14th: IPaT Summer Internships

March 28th: TBD

CANCELED: April 4th: The Georgia Coastal Equity & Resilience Hub

April 11th: IPaT Office Hours (virtual drop in session)

Facilitated by Kait Morano, Research Scientist II, Institute for People and Technology and Russ Clark, Senior Research Scientist, Institute for People and Technology

Maribeth Gandy Coleman
Tuesday, April 4 at 3:30pm
TSRB, 85 Fifth Street NW, Rooms 132-134
Virtual option - click here

Michael Best
Wednesday, April 5 at 11:00am
TSRB, 85 Fifth Street NW, Rooms 132-134
Virtual option - click here

Neha Kumar
Tuesday, April 4 at 11:00am
TSRB, 85 Fifth Street NW, Rooms 132-134
Virtual option - click here

Betsy DiSalvo
Monday, April 3 at 11:00am
TSRB, 85 Fifth Street NW, Rooms 132-134
Virtual option - click here

This talk will address the design challenges and opportunities in creating health technologies for men to improve the health of women in religiously conservative, patriarchal, and low-income societies. In this talk, I will share findings from the deployment of a speech-based service called Super Abbu (Super Dad) designed to connect expectant fathers to doctors and to each other. Over a period of 71 days, the service reached upwards of 20,000 users who spent almost 400 thousand minutes on the platform. Through a critical examination of cultural and societal factors, such as traditional gender roles, stigma towards sexual health information-seeking, and limited access to resources, I will highlight key considerations for designing effective and culturally sensitive health technologies for this population. The goal of this talk is to provide insights and recommendations for designers, researchers, and practitioners to create health technologies that are inclusive, accessible, and effective for users, regardless of their cultural, social, and economic backgrounds.

Speaker Bio:

Mustafa Naseem is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. Mustafa’s research focuses on design challenges around creating, deploying and scaling health technologies in religiously conservative, patriarchal and low-income societies. Mustafa’s scholarship informs technology and policy design in international development, with a focus on centering marginalized individuals’ voices and needs, while focusing on factors such as access and gender. Mustafa has taught and conducted research with underserved communities in Pakistan, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana and the US. Mustafa’s work is published in venues including ACM CHI, CSCW, Web Conference (WWW), Compass, and ICTD, and has received Best Paper Honorable Mention and Diversity and Inclusion Awards at ACM CHI and CSCW. Mustafa received his Masters in ICT and Development (ICTD) from the University of Colorado Boulder on a Fulbright Scholarship. His work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and USAID, among others.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

“Deepfakes” are videos in which the (usually human) subject of a video has been digitally altered to appear to do or say something that they never actually did or said. Sometimes these manipulations produce innocuous novelties (e.g., testing what it would look like if Will Smith had been cast as “Neo” in the film The Matrix), but far more dangerous use cases have been observed (e.g., producing fake footage of Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he instructs Ukrainian military forces to surrender on the battlefield). Generating the knowledge and tools necessary to defend against potential harms these videos could impose is likely to rely on contributions from a broad coalition of disciplines, many of which are represented in the GVU. In this week’s Brown Bag presentation, we will offer some real-time demonstrations of deepfake technology and present findings from our work that has largely focused on investigating the psychological factors influencing deepfake detection.

Speaker Bios:

John Stasko is a Regents Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. He works in the areas of information visualization and visual analytics, approaching each from a human-computer interaction perspective. Stasko received the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) Visualization Technical Achievement Award in 2012 and was inducted into the ACM CHI Academy in 2016 and IEEE Visualization Academy in 2019. He was named an IEEE Fellow in 2014 and an ACM Fellow in 2023.

Richard Catrambone is a Professor in the School of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his B.A. from Grinnell College and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan. His research interests include problem solving, educational technology, and human-computer interaction. He explores how to create instructional materials that help learners understand how to approach problems in a meaningful way rather than simply memorizing a set of steps that cannot easily be transferred to novel problems. He served on the Cognitive Science Society governing board from 2011-2016 and was chair of the Society in 2015.

Zack Tidler is a doctoral student in the School of Psychology with an emphasis in engineering psychology. His primary research interest is in developing new measures of human cognitive ability that consider tool usage, but he has developed a secondary research program which is focused on the study of deepfake video detection in humans. He is a former president of the Georgia Tech Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. His work on deepfake detection has been featured in the College of Sciences newsletter and the 2021 issue of the GT Alumni Magazine.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

This talk will address the design challenges and opportunities in creating health technologies for men to improve the health of women in religiously conservative, patriarchal, and low-income societies. In this talk, I will share findings from the deployment of a speech-based service called Super Abbu (Super Dad) designed to connect expectant fathers to doctors and to each other. Over a period of 71 days, the service reached upwards of 20,000 users who spent almost 400 thousand minutes on the platform. Through a critical examination of cultural and societal factors, such as traditional gender roles, stigma towards sexual health information-seeking, and limited access to resources, I will highlight key considerations for designing effective and culturally sensitive health technologies for this population. The goal of this talk is to provide insights and recommendations for designers, researchers, and practitioners to create health technologies that are inclusive, accessible, and effective for users, regardless of their cultural, social, and economic backgrounds.

Speaker Bio:

Mustafa Naseem is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. Mustafa’s research focuses on design challenges around creating, deploying and scaling health technologies in religiously conservative, patriarchal and low-income societies. Mustafa’s scholarship informs technology and policy design in international development, with a focus on centering marginalized individuals’ voices and needs, while focusing on factors such as access and gender. Mustafa has taught and conducted research with underserved communities in Pakistan, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana and the US. Mustafa’s work is published in venues including ACM CHI, CSCW, Web Conference (WWW), Compass, and ICTD, and has received Best Paper Honorable Mention and Diversity and Inclusion Awards at ACM CHI and CSCW. Mustafa received his Masters in ICT and Development (ICTD) from the University of Colorado Boulder on a Fulbright Scholarship. His work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and USAID, among others.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

Facilitated by Leanne West, Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technologies

Georgia Tech artists-in-residence Whitney & Micah Stansell, Tristan Al-Haddad, William Barrow, Whispers of Night, Rafiana, Doctor Calico, and Adia Davina will do a panel discussion on arts and technology. These artists-in-residence are working at Georgia Tech this spring as part of three distinct residency programs: Media Arts, Library AIR, and PREMIER. The panel will be led by residency program organizers Yanni Loukissas (Media Arts), Catherine Manci (Library AIR), and Noura Howell (PREMIER). The Media Arts and PREMIER residency programs are funded by GVU/IPaT. 

About the Artists:

Tristan Al-Haddad is a multi-medium designer and visual artist in addition to previously holding the position of assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech. He leads Atlanta-based Formations Studio. Al-Haddad’s work has been exhibited in venues including the Pompidou Center, The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Boston Center for the Arts, The International Contemporary Furniture Fair, and The AIA’s Center for Architecture in New York, as well as being published in print sources including the New York Times, Dwell, Metropolis, Art Papers and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Al-Haddad was one of seven recipients of the ARTADIA Artist Award in 2009 in addition to being a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria in Valparaiso, Chile. In 2014 Al-Haddad was selected by the US Department of State to represent the United States at the Colombo Art Biennale in Sri Lanka. He has large scale permanent sculptures located throughout the United States. 

Micah and Whitney Stansell’s body of work ranges from fibers, sculpture, painting and drawing to single and multi-channel film and video works, to large public art installations. The work often explores ideas of family history, narrative traditions, and binary relationships that pull from contemporary issues influenced and informed by environment and location.   

The Stansells’ work has been reviewed in numerous publications including Art in America, Moviemaker Magazine, FiberARTS Magazine, and the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Exhibiting in galleries, museums, contemporary art centers, and film festivals, the Stansells’ work has been experienced in cities around the world including Beijing, Vienna, New York, and Atlanta.   

Recent honors include a Forward Arts Prize, Special Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival, Artadia Award, MOCA Working Artist Project Award, Herradura Art Prize, NMWA 2020 Artist to Watch, and a Student Academy Award Nomination for their graduate thesis film. Their work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and in Cornell University, and SCAD-Atlanta, Lacoste France, and Hong Kong. 

Whispers of Night: Majid Araim, Benjamin Shirley -- Whispers of Night is an ongoing musical collaboration between Majid Araim and Benjamin Shirley, a multi-instrumental duo rooted in the sounds of the South and dedicated to exploration, improvisation, and creative expression. After almost a decade of collaboration and tours across the United States and Europe, the duo honed a sympathetic and dynamic musical bond, persistently seeking to cultivate novel concepts of composition, recording, and presentation in musical practice. Since 2014, Whispers in the Night developed a conception of improvised music nurturing the sound worlds of acoustic instruments such as fiddle, mandolin, cello, banjo, harmonica, drums, and voice, bringing to the fore their resonance and timbres with the elemental feeling of the music traditions of the southern Appalachian region. 

Doctor Calico. Here’s what you need to know about Doctor Calico: A child prodigy on piano and drums at four, he played glockenspiel in the orchestra by six. This led to experiments with tape and turntables by age eight, then programming BASIC on a Commodore 64 and analog synthesizers utilizing subtractive synthesis at 10. Calico produced his first catalog by age 15 in a home-built, four-track studio called Soundworks, for which he received the Governor’s Award in Art. He started producing records, then signed a publishing deal for a 300-song catalog by age 18 with MCA.  

Calico has produced many major label artists including Organized Noize, Akon, X-Clan, Toni Braxton, and Elephant Man. In addition to being self-taught in more than 100 instruments, he started the award-winning, state grant-funded Renaissance Kids program for College Park schools. Additionally, Calico founded a 60-week residency in 2015 at the Magnolia House in Historic West End Atlanta with Dr. Al-Yasha Williams of Spelman University.  

Doctor Calico currently works as a DJ and electronic musician at Underground Atlanta’s arts facility and performs at various venues in the city. Recent accomplishments include going viral as an influencer on Instagram by sharing live musical performances and archival content. He has racked up more than a million views on the self-made platform with no advertising or paid partnerships. 

William Barrow. Born in western Kentucky, William Barrow works with oftentimes outdated electronics to convey contemporary concepts through sound and video. He produces videos and electronic sounds as a result of experimentation with children’s toys, audio and video tape machines, and synthesizers, creating interconnected systems of pre-existing and homemade instruments.  

Barrow studied at Murray State University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in video and performance. There he was a manager of the university galleries and the sculpture studio assistant for four years, as well as being the head of 3D printing operations for the Summer Art Workshop. He has worked in collaboration with dancers, electronic and acoustic musicians, and provided live sound for Butoh dance workshops and outdoor yoga classes. Since moving to Atlanta, Barrow has joined the Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra (AIO) and worked closely with experimental performance and event venue No Tomorrow. 

Adia Davina is an experimental, independent and multi-disciplinary artist based in Atlanta. Currently she is pursuing an interdisciplinary degree at Georgia State University, as well as engaging in collaborations with the theatre department as a playwright and wardrobe assistant.  

Davina has performed in Ghana with Rakaba, a west African dance company, sung in numerous choirs, trained at John Robert Powers and performed, recorded and toured the United States with artist Raury. Her unique vocals can be heard echoing through his hit song, and her first feature, “Gods Whisper.” Her last performance with him was at Coachella 2017. Davina currently works as a stylist and make-up artist and directs, writes and produces music. 

Rafiana is a multidisciplinary artist of Puerto Rican and American descent from Atlanta producing works in the performing arts, music, film, and painting. They have shared the stage with Grammy-nominated performers, as well as self-professed “non-performers.”  

Rafiana's work focuses on improvisation and the many ways in which that practice collides with elements of form. After graduating from Georgia State, their work became largely based in an abstraction of poetry as it related to the body, the physical world, movement, dance and music.  

The most recent live works include large-scale experimental theater pieces in which an orchestra scores movements and actions loosely choreographed with an emphasis on improvisational “moods” created by various elements in each scene.  

Rafiana designs many of the aesthetic elements of their theater world, which involves creating costumes, props, object curation, painting, sound design, and lighting. The more recent themes of their work have been rooted in exploitation of the self, exploring variations on the concept of clowning and experiments with abstraction of samples to environments and material played on the midi guitar. 

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

As part of the Convergence Innovation Competition, a panel of industry and campus partners will review teams’ submission materials virtually.  

About the Competition 

The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website. 

How, When, and Should Robots Deceive Humans? 
Kantwon Rogers is a fifth-year PhD student (advised by Ayanna Howard) and has also served as an instructor for the undergraduate introduction to Matlab course for the past six years. His interests include human-computer/robot interaction, teaching, and baking cupcakes.

Building and Evaluating Controllable Models for Text Simplification
Mounica Maddela is a sixth-year PhD student advised by Wei Xu. Her broad interests are natural language processing and machine learning with focus on natural language generation.

Guidance Communication in Mixed-Initiative Visual Analytics
Arpit Narechania is a fourth-year Computer Science PhD student, advised by Alex Endert. He loves to apply techniques from information visualization, visual analytics and human-computer interaction to design systems that help users interact with and make sense of their data; these users span automobile engineers, digital marketers, database engineers, data scientists, and most recently geographic information system experts.

Creative Wand: A System to Study Effects of Communications in Co-Creative Settings
Zhiyu Lin is a sixth year PhD student advised by Mark Riedl. His interests lie in machine learning techniques to procedurally generate user-aware interactive experiences and the user experience revolving around it, i.e., the human-machine interface that stimulates mixed-initiative/co-creativity applications.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

IPaT and GT Neuro are excited to host this Industry Innovation Day together as a response to industry interest in our aligned and collaborative endeavors.

Industry Innovation Day begins with keynotes, panels, and student poster sessions on relevant and innovative projects. In the afternoon, IPaT presents GVU Spring Research Showcase where research demonstrations are presented from across IPaT by students, professors, and research faculty.

Industry Innovation Day is an IPaT event, co-presented with GT Neuro in 2023

Many real-world applications require that robots handle the complexity of multi-party social encounters, e.g., delivery robots may need to navigate through crowds, robots in manufacturing settings may need to coordinate their actions with those of human coworkers, and robots in educational environments may help multiple people practice and improve their skills. How can we enable robots to effectively take part in these social interactions? At first glance, multi-party interactions may be seen as a trivial generalization of one-on-one human-robot interactions, suggesting no special consideration. Unfortunately, this approach is limited in practice because it ignores higher-order effects, like group factors, that often drive human behavior in multi-party Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). 

In this talk, I will describe two research directions that we believe are important to advance multi-party HRI. The first direction focuses on understanding group dynamics and social group phenomena from an experimental perspective. The other one focuses on leveraging graph state abstractions and structured data-driven methods for reasoning about social contexts, which include individual, interpersonal and group-level factors relevant to human-robot interactions. As part of this talk, I will also describe our recent efforts to scale HRI data collection for early system development and testing via online interactive surveys. We have begun to explore this idea in the context of social robot navigation but, thanks to advances in game development engines, it could be easily applied to other HRI application domains.

Speaker Bio:

Marynel Vázquez is an Assistant Professor in Yale’s Computer Science Department, where she leads the Interactive Machines Group. Her research focuses on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), especially in multi-party and group settings. Marynel is a recipient of the 2022 NSF CAREER Award and two Amazon Research Awards. Her work has been recognized with nominations to paper awards at RO-MAN 2016, IROS 2018, HRI 2021, and RO-MAN 2022. Prior to Yale, Marynel was a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision & Learning Lab and obtained her M.S. and Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, where she was a collaborator of Disney Research. Before then, she received her bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

Facilitated by Robert Knotts, Executive Director, Georgia Tech Federal Relations

Virtual Conferencing Details:

Meeting URL

Meeting ID: 974 9201 1541

Participant Passcode: 226701

For higher quality, dial a number based on your current location.
Dial:
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
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Facilitated by Zack Tidler, graduate student; Richard Catrambone, Professor of Psychology and John Stasko, Regents Professor, School of Interactive Computing

The goal of the symposium is for researchers, stakeholders, staff, members, care partners and community members to share and discuss research aimed at empowering people living with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We will take stock, move forward, encourage collaboration, and synergize the center's progress. Attendees will hear from CEP researchers, members and care partners about what we have been able to accomplish so far in our 3 years of operation. To learn more about the CEP, please visit http://ipat.gatech.edu/cep. 
 

We hope that you are able to attend the symposium and ask that you share this invitation with the members of your network. And we look forward to collaborating with you! To register for the conference, please visit https://bit.ly/3XlWcdL.

And for more information about the symposium, please contact Jennifer DuBose at jennifer.dubose@design.gatech.edu. 

While the hope is that most participants will join us in person at CEP, we will be broadcasting the event live online for those who prefer to participate virtually. Please note that registration is required  for all participants – the link for virtual programming will be sent out closer to the event date. There will be lunch available after the formal program ends to give the people who attend in person an opportunity to socialize and network. And parking is free!! 

The Raise Your Hand exhibit, shown in the lobby of the Ferst Center on 1-14 November, 2022, used LIDAR and camera-based pose detection from participants to control parameters in Arduino-controlled mechatronics and in original music and video.  The combination of interactive mechatronics along with interactive music and video distinguish this exhibit different from many other reported interactive art installations in recent years.  The purpose of the exhibit was to entertain participants and to investigate what aspects of the exhibit were most effective.  The talk will describe the exhibit and the results collected from four focus groups and 200+ online survey responses.

Speaker Bio:

Mary Ann Weitnauer has been a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech since 1989 and was Senior Associate Chair there from 2016-2021. After decades of wireless communication research and some teaching of design courses, often involving art, she decided in 2021 to begin, with Tom Martin of GTRI, the Electronic ARTrium VIP team, and shifted her focus to interactive digital art with mechatronics, music, and video.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) promises to enhance even the most mundane of objects with computational properties. Yet, IoT has largely focused on new devices while ignoring the home’s many existing possessions. Requiring households to replace their possessions to adopt IoT yields substantial costs. Beyond financial, these include waste, work to arrange and orchestrate objects to suit households, and attention investment to acquire new skills. To address these costs, this project worked with 10 American families to design an upcycled approach to IoT that makes use of existing household possessions and then built a system responsive to these findings. The results 1) describe patterns of families’ socio-material practices, 2) develop a framework for designing lightweight modification, and 3) presents The IoT Codex—a book of programmable and inexpensive, battery-free interactive devices—to support customizing everyday objects with software and web services using stickers. The presented work offers a lightweight approach to end user programming of everyday objects for customizing IoT to suit idiosyncratic socio-material practices.

Speaker Bio:

Kristin Williams is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in Emory University's College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on making programming the Internet of Things approachable to casual end user programmers. This work builds on Kristin's longstanding interests in agency, DIY publishing, and access to information. In the past, Kristin has worked closely with community organizations to shape and evaluate assistive technologies for individuals with visual and cognitive disabilities, managed an archive of Soviet dissident literature on the political abuse of psychiatry, and created a 10+ year book project on Central Asian civil society as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan. She has a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University's Human Compter Interaction Institute, an MS in Human-Computer Interaction from both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, College Park and a BA in Philosophy from Reed College.  She was a 2021 EECS Rising Star, an NSF EAPSI Fellow, and an AAUW Career Development Grantee.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Spring 2023

The finalist projects from the Convergence Innovation Competition (CIC) will be featured during this GVU Brown Bag. The teams will each give an overview of their projects including their process of customer and project discovery and future project opportunities. A panel conversation with team members from each finalist will discuss their background, process, and team development. At the end of the brown bag, the winning teams will be announced and prizes awarded. Student teams are encouraged to attend the session to learn more about projects and network with campus and industry partners.

About the Competition:  The CIC encourages students to create innovative, viable products and experiences with the support of campus and industry resources and guidance. Areas of interest are determined by our campus, industry, and community partners. Winning entries will include a working end-to-end prototype which operates on converged services, media, networks, services, and platforms as well as a value proposition model.

As part of the competition, one team is awarded a Golden Ticket to participate in the Create-X Startup Launch program during the summer! Winning team members and runner up team members receive a prize for participating. The prizes vary each semester and typically include electronics and other unique items. The winning CIC teams go on to launch, commercialization, other competitions, as well as internship and job opportunities strengthened by their competition experience. CIC runs in the Fall and Spring semesters and is produced by GT-RNOC in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Learn more about the competition at the Convergence Innovation Competition website.

Panel Moderator Bio:

Clint Zeagler is the co-director of strategic partnerships at IPaT. With a Ph.D. in human centered computing, Zeagler drives his research on electronic textiles and on-body interfaces with the Contextual Computing Group and the GVU Center of Georgia Tech. As a senior research scientist within IPaT and as an instructor for Georgia Tech, he teaches courses on Wearable Product Design and Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing (MUC). Zeagler enjoys working with corporations such as HP/Palm, Google, and even the Atlanta Braves to bring real world experience into the classroom. As a member of the NASA Wearable Technology Cluster, his ongoing relationship with the NASA Georgia Space Grant Consortium funds MUC student projects on wearable computing for space.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Eye-tracking sensors track where a user looks and are being increasingly integrated into mixed-reality devices. Although critical applications are being enabled, there are significant possibilities for violating user security and privacy expectations. There is an appreciable risk of unique user identification from eye-tracking camera images and the resulting eye movement data. Biometric identification would allow an app to connect a user’s personal ID with their work ID without needing their consent, for example. Solutions were explored to address concerns related to the leaking of biometric features through eye-tracking data streams. Privacy mechanisms are introduced to reduce the risk of biometric recognition while still enabling applications of eye-tracking data streams. Gaze data streams can thus be made private while still allowing for applications key to the future of mixed-reality technology, such as animating virtual avatars or prediction models necessary for foveated rendering.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Brendan David-John (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Brendan was the first Native male to graduate with a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Florida in 2022, and received his BS and MS from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2017. He is from Salamanca NY, which is located on the Allegany reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians. His personal goals include increasing the representation of Native Americans in STEM and higher education, specifically in computing. He is a proud member of the American Indian Science & Engineering Society and has been a Sequoyah Fellow since 2013. His research interests include virtual reality and eye tracking, with a primary focus on privacy and security for the future of virtual and mixed reality.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Personal tracking through digital technologies like pedometers, mood monitoring apps, and food journaling apps has great potential to help people begin to change their behaviors, understand their habits, connect with others and advocate for their healthcare. But in practice, they have largely failed to deliver on their promise of helping people derive value from their health and wellbeing data, with majorities abandoning tracking within weeks or even days. A core challenge is that people often view the act of tracking as a meaningless experience, finding that tracking technology prioritizes behavior change over opportunity to create other meaningful experiences through personal satisfaction, connection, and communication. In this talk, I discuss how my research group has approached understanding how to make personal tracking more meaningful, and design strategies that we think provide for more meaningful tracking experiences. I will touch on opportunities for meaningful tracking we are examining in personal, social, and clinical settings.

Speaker Bio:

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. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington in 2018. His work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and Snap Inc.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Production challenges are rarely solved by the pure application of code. Many obstacles encountered in the making of a CG animated movie balance artistic needs against production limits. Potential solutions often have restrictions related to budget and immovable release dates. This talk walks through three complex problems from Tangled, Moana and Frozen II and the solutions needed to resolve them.

Speaker Bio:

Heather Pritchett, (MS CS 93) started with Walt Disney Animation Studios shortly after graduation. After 28 years, she’s still enjoying her job. In her nearly three decades with Disney she has worked on theme park projects, videos games, shorts, live-action films, and animated films, both hand-drawn and CG. She is a frequent mentor for new hires and part of an internal committee that address workflow issues and technical debt. She recently finished up work on “Strange World”, which is hitting theaters on November 23rd. She can’t tell you about her current project because it’s still a secret. When she’s not recovering from a global pandemic, she likes to volunteer for organizations like Girls Who Code, PyLadies and Django Girls.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Brittany and Julian will discuss the way agriculture has transformed over the last two decades with the infusion of data, GPS, and AI. They will review five pivotal examples of technologies that are helping farmers feed the world sustainably by: augmenting human skills; farming remotely; and, in some cases, superhuman capabilities.

Speaker Bios:

Brittany Holthausen, Ph.D., is a Senior User Experience (UX) Engineer responsible for operator experience of John Deere’s harvesting products. In this role, she discovers, defines, and evaluates design concepts for the harvesting product portfolio in collaboration within the UX design, UX research, automation experience, and product development teams.

Prior to her role at John Deere, Brittany built and led a team to design and develop the next generation of military aviation experience at Boeing Defense, Space, and Security. She also completed several internships at Naval Surface Warfare Center - Carderock and Naval Surface Warfare Center - Dahlgren where she worked on a wide range of projects from heterogeneous unmanned vehicle control to weapon system development. Brittany has authored over 25 peer-reviewed publications in the area of trust in automation.

She earned bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering and psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University prior to earning master’s and doctoral degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology in Engineering Psychology.

Julian Sanchez, Ph.D., is a John Deere Fellow, and the Director of Emerging Technologies in the Intelligent Solutions Group (ISG) at John Deere. Julian’s team focuses on researching, developing, and supporting the deployment of Deere's next generation technologies to improve customer profitability and sustainability.

As a seasoned technologist he has made significant contributions at John Deere including the establishment of UX capabilities and the early deployment of digital solutions in agriculture. Julian holds over 20 patents and has published dozens of peer-reviewed studies in the areas of aviation, agriculture, and medical devices.

He earned his bachelor’s in industrial engineering and master’s in industrial and systems engineering from Florida International University and his Ph.D. in human factors from Georgia Institute of Technology.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Computing holds the promise of alleviating negative impacts of mental illness and chronic disorders by scaling human effort and best medical-practices over time and space. One in five adults is experiencing mental illness and four in ten adults in the US have two or more chronic diseases. The  urgent need to manage these conditions calls for robust, and reliable technology that is useful and usable by patients and their caregivers. It calls for accountability at the intersection of science and design. In this talk, I will demonstrate how human-centered computing can leverage the generalizability of theoretical frameworks to design and build computational systems for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Diabetes. I will discuss unique challenges in each clinical domain and will present theory-driven technology interventions that address them. I will also explore how these interventions can lead to improved health and wellness in diverse populations.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Rosa Arriaga is Associate Professor and the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the School of Interactive Computing Georgia Tech. She received her PhD in Psychology from Harvard University. Her research interests are in the use of psychological theories and concepts to address fundamental topics of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and mHealth. She is currently the lead PI for the NSF Smart and Connected Health project titled “Prolonged Exposure Collective Sensing System (PECSS) for PTSD”. In 2022, she received the Dalmas A. Taylor Distinguished Contributions Award from the American Psychological Association.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Operational concepts for novel robotic systems employing a human supervisor require the consideration of enabling technologies, the needs of the human operators, and their interactions. Leveraging the abstraction hierarchy method can support the development of a set of function allocations to inform the operational concept and a research roadmap for novel systems. Reviewing current and envisioned enabling technologies can support downselect of the potential function allocations. The use of operational event sequence diagrams can help to specify information and control requirements and also to identify gaps in the operational concept. The combination of the abstraction hierarchy method and operational event sequence diagrams holds promise for supporting the development of operational concepts for novel robotic systems.  As a case study, this talk addresses the use of the methods to inform the specification of the human-robot interaction for a novel robotic Medjool date palm tree thinning system.

Speaker Bio:

Ellen J. Bass is Interim Associate Dean for Research and Professor in the Department of Information Science in the Drexel University’s College of Computing and Informatics, Bass has over 30 years of human-centered systems engineering research and design experience in multiple domains. She develops theories of human performance, quantitative modeling methodologies, and associated decision support and visualizations that can be used to design and to evaluate human-autonomy interaction and human-human collaboration in the context of total system performance.  Her research program is currently funded by the FAA, NIH, PCORI, and the VA. Bass is the Past Secretary-Treasurer and a fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and a senior member of the IEEE and of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Bass holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Advanced Technology from the State University of New York at Binghamton, a B.S.Eng. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S.Econ. in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

This seminar is presented by Rena Youngblood, Executive Director of Computer Museum of America (CMoA) located in Roswell, GA. Rena will share how and why the museum was started, how they managed the pandemic, their goals for education and inspiration, and why Atlanta needs to treasure this metro area history museum.

Speaker Bio:

Rena Youngblood is the first Executive Director of the Computer Museum of America (CMoA) located in Roswell, Georgia.  The museum opened to the public in July 2019.

Rena leads and directs all aspects of the organization, including finances and fundraising; communications and marketing; education and programming; stewardship and management of facilities and collections; and building positive working relationships with the Board of Directors, community, external partners, stakeholders, visitors to the museum and donors.

Before joining CMoA, Rena served as Senior Director of Charter School Services for the Association of American Educators and as Director of Member Services at the Georgia Charter Schools Association.  She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a minor in Communication Studies.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

For decades our smart devices, from wireless sensor networks to FitBits, have generally assumed stable, reliable power from a battery or wall outlet. These devices are exploding in numbers and quickly becoming the foundational data collection platforms used to inform societal and personal scale decisions. Unfortunately, the battery dependency of these devices prevents scaling (because of bulk, expense, and maintenance) and contributes to existing global e-waste problems. This talk explores an alternative; instead of relying on energy stored in a battery, harvesting energy from the surrounding environment; however, this unstable energy supply means that these devices compute intermittently through many power failures. This new paradigm of sustainable computational things has required a rethinking of hardware, software design, and tool creation– yet it has also opened up incredible new avenues to deploy sustainable data science infrastructure, health sensing, and reimagine education at scale. I'll describe advances in making these devices more useful in the context of motivating data-science applications our lab has worked on: including late-breaking work on smart face masks, a system that enables novices to program intermittently powered devices with Python or Block-based languages, and large scale environmental monitoring.

Speaker Bio:

Josiah Hester holds the Allchin Chair and is Associate Professor of Interactive Computing and Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Josiah was previously at Northwestern as an Assistant Professor. He works in intermittent computing and battery-free embedded computing systems. He applies his work to health wearables, interactive devices, and large-scale sensing for sustainability and conservation, supported by multiple grants from the NSF, NIH, and DARPA. He was named a Sloan Fellow in Computer Science and won his NSF CAREER in 2022. He was named one of Popular Science's Brilliant Ten, won the American Indian Science and Engineering Society Most Promising Scientist/Engineer Award, and the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award in 2021. His work has received six Best Paper type Awards and seven Best Presentation type Awards, and featured in the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, BBC, Popular Science, Communications of the ACM, and the Guinness Book of World Records, among many others.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Growing public discussions, legislative actions, and worker actions call for greater consideration of social values and ethics during technology development. In response, approaches such as compliance checklists have been developed to address these issues. However, fully addressing ethical issues in technology systems requires approaches beyond prescriptive checklists, also needing a broader range of modes of action across different stages of technology development and use.
 
In this talk, I report on projects that investigate different modes of engaging ethical concerns in design. One project uses speculative design probes to prompt conversations with technology professionals about privacy and surveillance in Internet of Things technologies in various social contexts. Another focuses on the work practices of a group of North American user experience (UX) professionals at large technology companies. These professionals see addressing social values and ethical issues as part of their everyday UX work. They also aim to create change at group or institutional levels from their positionalities within large corporations, with mixed success.
 
Throughout the talk, I draw out several relationships between design and ethics that can help engage in surfacing, discussing, and addressing values and ethical issues, including: design as a form of ethical provocation; design as a form of labor to address ethical issues; and design as a research method and reflective practice. This research points to a broader set of modes of engagement that can be used to consider values and ethical issues during technology design research and practice.

Speaker Bio:

Richmond Wong is an Assistant Professor in Digital Media at the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. His research focuses on understanding the social values, ethical issues, and work involved in technology production and use. He studies how technology professionals address ethical issues in their work. He also develops design-centered approaches to engage groups that create or are impacted by digital technology, to proactively discuss and consider ethical issues related to technology such as privacy or fairness. Richmond's work utilizes qualitative and design-based methods, drawing from science and technology studies, speculative and critical design, and human-computer interaction. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley School of Information.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Background: Trimble is committed to delivering autonomy solutions that bring value to our customers faster than ever before. But creating autonomy solutions is not an easy task. These new technologies need to control real equipment out in the real world safely and efficiently. One of the most difficult challenges is getting access to the real machines to test the latest build, validate algorithms or verify that multiple components integrate correctly. Another challenge is access to ground truth. When data is collected in the field, one has to also obtain the best possible data that represents the “truth”. Any errors in your ground truth data will affect the accuracy of the estimated efficiency of the solution.

One of the technologies that has been identified as an enabler for creating complex solutions is simulation. For the past eight years, Trimble has promoted the Virtual Proving Ground as a way to optimize and share the benefits of high-fidelity simulations.

Problem Statement: Even though there is a general consensus that simulation can solve these problems, it can also raise other challenges. One of the most critical ones is that there is little time between the moment when stakeholders decide that a simulation system needs to be used in a project and the moment when developers and testers need to have access to the actual simulator.
 
Synopsis: In this presentation, we will share the way the virtual proving ground (VPG) is being used to expedite the development of several autonomy projects in Trimble. The presentation will show examples of several custom simulators created with a just- in- time approach to deliver virtual equipment with hardware in the loop to testers, developers and stakeholders. Finally, we will present an overview of the latest and future upgrades of the VPG tools that have enabled the Trimble autonomy simulation team to deliver and continue to produce high fidelity solutions in record time.

Speaker Bio:

Augusto received a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s Degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Ph.D. in Computer Graphics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has over 30 years of experience in research, development and implementation of complex dynamic virtual environments.

He pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in construction simulation applications while working as a research engineer and post-doctoral fellow from 1994 to 1997 at Georgia Tech. He served as senior research engineer at Spectra Precision Software from 1997 to 2000, where he developed Terravista, Terramodel Visualizer and the Virtual Environment Manager SDK. In 2000, he co-founded XYZ Solutions, Inc. where he led the development team that created XYZ World, a real-time publish-subscribe 3D monitoring suite. After XYZ Solutions was acquired by Trimble in 2006, he started working as a senior research engineer focusing on simulation and visualization projects for several Trimble divisions. In 2011, he pioneered the use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to accelerate image processing and point cloud colorization and was invited to demonstrate the potential of GPU computing to the Trimble Board of Directors. In 2013, Augusto introduced the Virtual Proving Ground (VPG), a comprehensive simulation framework that can be used to propose and test the validity of ideas and also to develop and promote products. Over the last decade, VPG has been used in Building Construction, Geospatial, Mining, Forensics, Civil Engineering Construction, CTCT, ICT, and Ag projects. In 2019, Augusto joined Trimble Autonomous Solutions (TAS) and became the product owner of VPG. He currently leads the simulation team in TAS which is responsible for the development of simulation tools for autonomy projects.

He holds a Caterpillar patent, eight Trimble patents, and received a Trimble Innovation Award for his work on Corkscrew (a parametric mine design software). During the 2017 Trimble Global Hackathon, Augusto led the “iCSI” team and received the grand prize award. He also led the “Field of Dreams” team during the 2021 Trimble Global Hackathon which won the Digital Transformation category award.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event). If you have any questions, email us at gvu@cc.gatech.edu.

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

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In the first GVU Brown Bag Seminar of the academic year, Keith Edwards, GVU Center Director and Professor of Interactive Computing, will kick off our talk series with an overview of the GVU Center detailing its unique resources and opportunities, and previewing some of the events coming up this semester.

Also, each year, the GVU Center and IPaT announce funding for the Engagement Grants, which support early stage work by Georgia Tech researchers. This year’s winners will give brief overviews of the work they will be doing over the coming academic year.

Speaker Bio:

Keith Edwards is a Professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Director of the GVU Center. His research interests focus primarily on driving human-centered concerns into core computing infrastructure. He is a pioneer in the exploration of human-centered perspectives on computer networking, particularly in the home and has been active in developing more usable approaches to information security systems. Lately, his research has expanded into a number of explorations of the social impacts of computing technology, and understanding how technology can support the work of non-profits and NGOs. While he is a technologist at heart, he enjoys working with designers, as well as ethnographers and other social scientists.

How to watch: If you can't attend. please watch the Live Stream, or view the Recording (available 30 days after event).

Schedule of Brown Bag Speakers Fall 2022

Counter-Institutional Data Accomplices

Project Title: Court Eviction Data as a Boundary Object for Housing Work with Carl DiSalvo [Interactive Computing], Elora Raymond [City and Regional Planning], and Anh-Ton Tran [Interactive Computing]
Housing costs in Atlanta have increased nearly 28% since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, institutional investors and Private Equity firms are snatching up more property and operating as landlords across communities of color, particularly in Atlanta. This reinscribes historical cycles of racial dispossession and inequity. How might computing scholars, with our disciplinary expertise in data, complement the fight for housing as a human right? Particularly when we live in an age where data is used as a scaffold to the commodification of housing? In this work, we present our findings and reflections working with a local housing activist-non-profit: Housing Justice League.  We first describe and analyze the data practices volunteering and technically managing a remote, community outreach tool for tenants facing eviction and seeking organizing support. We then interpret the work of Housing Justice League through the lens of care, identifying home-brewed databases and data fragmentations as negotiations between care and efficiency. We argue that care is enacted through the assemblage of the technical systems, and present tinkering as an alternative approach to developing data practices. Understanding how housing activists use data is a prerequisite to consider aiding and abetting social movement work with data. We conclude by sharing our most recent endeavors to utilize and couple institutional eviction data with grassroots data to inform organizing initiatives. We present a preliminary case on why corporate landlords exacerbate housing instability and how data can support future tenant organizing work.

Creating E-Textiles Across Disciplines

Project Title: E-Textile Workshop Series with Lisa Marks [Industrial Design] and Noah Posner [Industrial Design]
GVU is preparing to open an exciting new lab focused on the area of E-textiles.   This lab focuses on a rapidly emerging field that will lead to technological innovation for wearables, home goods, healthcare, and transportation.  To maximize this field’s potential, we must have students trained in both the hardware and coding as well as the fabric structure and making methods.  This Engagement Grant has funded the development of a series of 3 workshops (weaving, knitting, and CNC embroidery), each involving a discussion of the textile qualities and history, a hands-on demonstration and student creation of the textile, coding and implementation of electronic sensors, and a brainstorming session of potential uses of the methods covered in a variety of fields.

Internet Connection, Disconnection, and Everything In-Between

Project Title: Edge Computing for Bringing Smart Services to Underserved Urban Communities with Kishore Ramachandran [Computer Science], Ashutosh Dhekne [Computer Science], Manasvini Sethuraman [Computer Science], and Anirudh Sarma [Computer Science]
Today we are substantially dependent on centralized infrastructure (aka Cloud based services such as Netflix, Uber, YouTube, Coursera, Google Maps, etc.) for most of our everyday activities including learning, hailing a ride, restaurant suggestions in a neighborhood, etc. Many of our day-to-day activities depend on smart services made available to our fingertips from the cloud —be it participating in school, homework submission, job hunting, or grocery shopping. Studies have shown that access to the Internet (connection speed, duration of connectivity, and cost of connectivity) influences the way people search for jobs or do homework which in turn affects quality of life. While Internet penetration continues to be on the rise in densely populated urban areas, there continues to be a section of society where reliable and good Internet access is still not the norm. In urban areas, lack of access to the Internet is often correlated with lower income. We engaged with local leaders, public schools and non-profits to understand the internet infrastructure in Atlanta’s Westside, especially from the education standpoint. We present some of our findings, along with proposals for low-cost self-sustainable technological solutions to improve internet penetration in the neighborhood, without necessarily relying on increasing the number of internet subscriptions.

Speaker Bios:

Counter-Institutional Data Accomplices. Project Title: Court Eviction Data as a Boundary Object for Housing Work
Anh-Ton Tran is a PhD student advised by Dr. Carl DiSalvo in Human Centered Computing at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. His current research focuses on institutional and community eviction data. He studies how data acts as infrastructure for institutions and governments that coordinate their work. He also studies how data can be used to support and build community power through tenant organizing, and how data can be a form of participatory "institutioning."

Creating E-Textiles Across Disciplines. Project Title: E-Textile Workshop Series
Lisa Marks is an Assistant Professor in Industrial Design specializing in developing new technological adaptations and applications for traditional textile techniques. Her unique pedagogy aims to diversify material culture in Industrial Design and highlight how issues surrounding gender, class, and race have influenced Design throughout history.  Her work is in the permanent material collection at the University of Pennsylvania and has shown at design weeks in New York, Milan, India, and Bangkok. She has won the 2019 International Grand Prix Lexus Design Award. 

Noah Posner is a research scientist with the IMAGINE Lab and lab manager of the Interactive Product Design Lab (IPDL) in the School of Industrial Design. His focus is on creating interactive experiences that leverage physical interaction. He holds degrees in Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction. His research involves creating rich physical interactions, designing and fabricating interactive devices using CAD and Rapid prototyping technologies, and developing educational tools and workshops for STEAM learning that focus on utilizing hands-on learning with intentionally designed artifacts. He also teaches courses in Physical Prototyping for Human-Computer Interaction and Interactive Products for Industrial Design.

Internet Connection, Disconnection, and Everything In-Between. Project Title: Edge Computing for Bringing Smart Services to Underserved Urban Communities
Anirudh Sarma is a 2nd year PhD student at the Embedded Pervasive Lab and advised by Dr. Kishore Ramachandran. He is interested in exploring edge-centric mechanisms to optimize the data plane.

Manasvini Sethuraman is a 3rd year PhD student in the Embedded Pervasive Lab led by Dr. Kishore Ramachandran. Her research interests are primarily in design of edge/cloud computing systems focused on intermittent connectivity to the Internet.

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The analyses of mobility data are involved in a wide range of domains such as demography, public health, urban planning, transportation, business, and biology. Mobility data consists of a set of moving objects, each having a sequence of sampled locations as it moves across space and time.  In addition to a general overview of challenges for mobility analytics, this talk focuses on introducing a set of methodologies for mobility data mining, visualization, prediction, optimization, and their real-world applications.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Diansheng Guo is currently the Chief Scientist and Technology Committee Chair at Tencent Map, Tencent. Prior to joining Tencent, he was Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He received his B.S. degree from Peking University, M.S. from Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Guo has been conducting research in the fields of GIScience, big data analytics, information visualization, and recently in geospatial technologies in industry.  He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2008. He was the President (2012) and Chair of Board (2013) for the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences (CPGIS). 

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Nivedita Arora,  Designing for Sustainability in Computing: Self-Powered Computational Material 
In this era of burgeoning IoT devices, we measure computing progress with speed, power, and reliability improvements but often forego thinking about its environmental impact. A new sustainable way of thinking about computing across the full lifecycle -- including manufacturing, operation, and disposal -- is necessary to meet the present needs without compromising the wellbeing of the future generations. Inspired by this, during my Ph.D. I have built ‘Self-powered Computational Material’ that enables sustainable operation without toxic batteries. I will showcase this with an example of an easy-to retrofit sticky note that can sense human interactions like speech, movement, and touch and provide feedback by harvesting power from the surroundings. Finally, I will chart how designing for sustainability requires a high-interdisciplinary mindset and rethinking the entire computing stack from the material level.

Upol Ehsan, Human-Centered Explainable AI: Thinking Outside the Black-Box of AI
As AI systems power critical decisions in our lives, they need to be held accountable to mitigate an unjust AI-powered future. One way to hold AI systems accountable is to make them explainable– to understand the “why?” behind their decisions. Implicit in Explainable AI (XAI), is the question: explainable to whom? The “who” governs the most effective way of describing the “why” behind the decisions. Critical insights into how best to explain AI’s black box lie outside it; because that’s where the humans are.

In this talk about AI, humans will take center stage. I will discuss three aspects of the journey towards Human-Centered Explainable AI (HCXAI), a departure from the algorithm-centered roots of XAI. First, I will share how people’s perceptions of AI agents explaining their actions in plain English shaped the foundations of how we think about who the humans are in Human-centered Explainable AI (HCXAI). Second, I will chart the visions of HCXAI by bridging insights from Critical Theory and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to question the status quo of XAI design and expose intellectual blind spots. Third, I will apply the HCXAI lenses to highlight an intellectual blind spot in the algorithm-centered narrative of XAI and share how we addressed it by introducing the concept of Social Transparency in AI– a sociotechnically situated concept that expands the boundaries of XAI by incorporating socio-organizational contexts into AI systems. I will share key lessons from this journey towards HCXAI including missed turns and design implications around improving explainability, calibrating trust, and fostering decision-making.

Qiaosi Wang, Mutual Theory of Mind for Human-AI Communication
From navigation systems to smart assistants, we communicate with various types of AI on a daily basis. At the core of such human-AI communication, we convey our understanding of the AI system’s capability to the AI through utterances with different complexities, and the AI conveys its understanding of our needs and goals to us through system outputs. However, this communication process is prone to failures for two reasons: the AI systems might have the wrong understanding of the user and the user might have the wrong understanding of the AI. In my work, I posit the Mutual Theory of Mind framework, inspired by our basic human capability of “Theory of Mind”, to enhance mutual understanding in human-AI communication. My work takes place in the context of online education where AI agents have been widely deployed to offer informational and social support to online students. In this talk, I will discuss the three components of Mutual Theory of Mind in human-AI communication: the construction, recognition, and explanation of AI’s Theory of Mind. I will then describe in detail about one of my studies that leveraged linguistic cues in human-AI dialogues to construct a community’s understanding of an AI agent.

Speaker Bios:

Nivedita Arora is a computer science Ph.D. candidate in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, advised by Prof. Gregory Abowd and Prof. Thad Starner. Her research focuses on re-imagining the future of mobile and ubiquitous computing by embracing an alternative view of computing where the physical surfaces would be covered with self-powered computational material. Her research has won an ACM IMWUT distinguished paper, two best poster awards (UIST, MobiSys),  research highlight (SIGMOBILE GetMobile magazine, Communications of the ACM), and Fast Company Design Innovation Competition (Honoree Winner). In recognition of her work on sustainable computational materials, she was named the winner of the ACM Gaetano Borriello Outstanding UbiComp Student Award and Georgia Tech’s GVU Foley Award for the year 2021. In addition, she was recently part of the 2021 cohort of Rising Stars in EECS at MIT.

Upol Ehsan cares about people first, technology second. He is a doctoral candidate in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and an affiliate at the Data & Society Research Institute. Combining his expertise in AI and background in Philosophy, his work in Explainable AI (XAI) aims to foster a future where anyone, regardless of their background, can use AI-powered technology with dignity. His research has a personal origin story – he was wrongfully detained at an airport due to an automated system’s error, which no one could explain or hold anyone accountable for. Focusing on how our values shape the use and abuse of technology, his work has coined the term Human-centered Explainable AI (a sub-field of XAI) and charted its visions. Actively publishing in top peer-reviewed venues like CHI, his work has received multiple awards and been covered in major media outlets (e.g., MIT Technology Review, Vice, VentureBeat). Bridging industry and academia, he serves in multiple program committees in HCI and AI conferences (e.g., DIS, IUI, NeurIPS) and actively connects these communities (e.g, the widely attended HCXAI workshop at CHI). By promoting equity and ethics in AI, he wants to ensure stakeholders who aren’t at the table do not end up on the menu. He graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Washington & Lee University with dual-degrees in Philosophy (B.A.) and Engineering (B.S.) followed by a MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Outside research, he is an advisor for Aalor Asha, an educational institute he started for underprivileged children subjected to child labor. He is also a social entrepreneur and has co-founded DeshLabs, a social innovation lab focused on fostering grassroots innovations in emerging markets.

Qiaosi (Chelsea) Wang is a 2021 Foley Scholar and a Ph.D. student in Human-Centered Computing in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research lies at the intersection of Human-AI Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and Cognitive Science. Qiaosi’s dissertation work posits Mutual Theory of Mind as a framework to enhance mutual understanding in human-AI communication in the context of AI-facilitated remote social interaction. Her work has been published and received awards at prestigious venues such as ACM CHI, CSCW, DIS, and Learning@Scale. Qiaosi holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Informatics and Psychology from University of Washington, Seattle.

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Captioning Group Conversations on Smart Glasses for People Who Are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing, Gabriel Britain

People who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) tend to avoid group conversations with hearing people, as they find it difficult to follow along and participate. Smart glasses could help people who are DHH participate in group conversations in a discreet way. This research investigates how people who are DHH prefer to be shown captions in group contexts. The work presented today is part of the student’s Master’s Project requirements.

Facilitating Self-Management Practices in Type 2 Diabetes Patients, Jason Dong and Kaavya Singhal

This project is in conjunction with Emory Hospital and aims to examine self-management practices in low socioeconomic status Type 2 Diabetes patients. Ultimately, this project strives to design a mobile technological intervention to facilitate this process. The work presented today is a part of Jason and Kaavya’s Georgia Tech Master’s Project.

HerHeart, Aayahna Herbert and Tymirra Smith

The goal of the HerHeart project is to create a version of the Healthy Heart Score Tool that helps increase awareness of cardiac health for African American teens. The students are developing a mobile phone version of this tool that is engaging for teens and encourages them to take action to reduce their heart risk. The work presented today is part of the students’ HCI studio class project with their industry partner Georgia CTSA.

Netflix Master’s Project, Aditi Bhatnagar, Suyash Junnarkar, and Neha Khandavalli

Netflix viewers want to experience newly released shows and movies in an interactive social setting that will enable them to deeply engage with the entertainment content of their choice. This project explores avenues through which viewers can learn more about shows and movies in an interactive setting. The work presented today is part of the students’ Master’s Project, done with guidance from industry partners from Netflix.

SOFT -- Sea Otter Foraging Tech, Josh Terry

Can sensor-instrumented toys be used to monitor health and improve enrichment for sea otters at the Georgia Aquarium? This project looks at the design requirements of computer-driven otter enrichment devices and how we can help otter trainers derive meaningful health insights from the data pulled from such devices. The work presented today is part of the student’s Master’s Project.

Speaker Bios:

Captioning Group Conversations on Smart Glasses for People Who Are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing
Gabriel Britain is a second-year student in the Interactive Computing track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the Program, Gabriel graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in Computer Science.

Facilitating Self-Management Practices in Type 2 Diabetes Patients
Jason Dong is a second-year MS-HCI student in the Psychology track. Before entering the program, Jason graduated from UC Santa Barbara, where he majored in Biopsychology.
Kaavya Singhal is a second-year MS-HCI student in the Interactive Computing track. Before entering the program, Kaavya graduated from UC Berkeley, where she majored in Cognitive Science.

HerHeart
Aayahna Herbert is a first-year student in the Interactive Computing track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the program, Aayahna graduated from Clemson University with a degree in Computer Engineering.
Tymirra Smith is a first year student in the Industrial Design track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the program, Tymirra graduated from Georgia Tech and then worked at Brown Toy Box as a toy designer.

Netflix Master’s Project
Aditi Bhatnagar is a second-year student in the Psychology Track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the Program, Aditi graduated from University of California, Davis and then worked at SRI International’s neuroscience program as a research assistant.
Suyash Junnarkar is a second-year student in the Interactive Computing Track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the Program, Suyash graduated from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in India and then came to Georgia Tech for a Masters in Industrial Design for a certificate year.
Neha Khandavalli is a second-year student in the Interactive Computing Track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the Program, Neha graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Biochemistry and Computer Science and then worked at Data Innovations as a Software Engineer.

SOFT -- Sea Otter Foraging Tech
Josh Terry is a second-year student in the Digital Media track of the MS-HCI Program. Before entering the Program, Josh graduated from Georgia Tech's BS Computational Media Program and worked with Adult Swim Games as a Production Assistant.

Watch via BlueJeans Event: https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/live-event/kpqapgza 

Facilitated by Robert Knotts, Executive Director, Georgia Tech Federal Relations; Kari McCarron, Senior Principal, Lewis-Burke Associates; Emily Durham, Associate, Lewis-Burke Associates; Eve Granatosky, Principal, Lewis-Burke Associates; Naomi Webber, Senior Principal Consultant, Lewis-Burke Associates  

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Despite this basic fact, there is a surprising lack of research at the intersection of mental health and minority populations to characterize to what extent populations are affected.

This ongoing study utilizes real world data (i.e. patient health claims data) to assess the granular characteristics of minority populations afflicted with depression, bipolar disorder, or suicidality.

In doing so, the study will answer the questions of what populations with these conditions look like (i.e. how they are characterized), how they differ from populations without these diseases, and the characteristics of patients with these conditions who do not seek follow-up to care.

Additional discussion will touch on how this study has been built, potential areas for future work and collaboration, implications for large scale network research at GTRI, and composition of studies.

Facilitated by Jacob Zelko, Research Engineer, Health Data Analytics and Informatics Researcher, Georgia Tech Research Institute

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How can we design research that informs technology policy debates?
How can research help advance human rights advocacy in those debates?
And at the same time how can that research be novel and offer a contribution to the field?
These are some of the factors that guide research in advocacy organizations. In this talk I will discuss some of the ways we address these challenges drawing on practical experiences as well as my research. I will refer to our research in three broad areas - content moderation, surveillance, and disinformation. Specifically, I will share our experiences addressing problems such as detecting harmful content in end-to-end encrypted messaging services, understanding the extent to which school issued devices monitor students and in what ways, and an ongoing project examining the potentially disproportionate impacts of disinformation on women of color political candidates in the U.S. These diverse examples will also demonstrate how we bring together interdisciplinary teams of researchers to tackle these problems and how we create spaces for researchers and policy-makers to learn from each other.

Speaker Bio:

Dhanaraj Thakur is Research Director at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where he leads research that advances human rights and civil liberties online. Over the last 15 years, he has designed and led several research projects aimed at tech policy audiences and ranging in scope from multi-national studies to community level work. He has been interviewed and his work quoted in several news media, including WIRED, CNN, the WSJ, the Economist, the Guardian (UK), and the Financial Times, among others. In addition, he has published over 35 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers; as well as reports for several civil society organizations, multilateral development banks, and governments. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), and is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the University of the West Indies, and the University of Technology in Jamaica.

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During this Thursday Think Tank, we will:

• Provide advice on creating a dynamic CIC submission
• Brainstorm project ideas and options with student teams
• Explore the alignment and intersections of current course topics and research initiatives with the convergence areas
• Highlight the ways faculty can encourage student participation based on class projects, including different deliverable timelines

Facilitated by Russ Clark, Director of GT-RNOC, Senior Research Scientist, School of Computer Science; Matt Sanders, Director of Research Operations, Institute for People and Technology; and Faith Sumpter, Program & Operations Manager, Institute for People and Technology

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NSF has recently established a National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE) headquartered at Georgia Tech. The AI-ALOE Institute seeks to address the societal challenges of lifelong learning, workforce development, and reskilling and upskilling of millions of American workers. Online education offers an affordable medium for taking education to workers where they live. AI-ALOE will develop new AI technologies that enhance cognitive engagement, teacher presence, social interaction, and self-directed learning in online education, and thereby improve its quality for adult learners in STEM disciplines. In addition to these use-inspired AI techniques, AI-ALOE will conduct foundational AI research on personalization of learning at scale, interactive machine teaching, mutual theory of mind, and participatory design of sociotechnical systems for responsible AI. I will describe AI-ALOE’s vision, goals and plans, using examples from my research laboratory for illustration.

Speaker Bio:

Ashok Goel is a Professor of Computer Science and Human-Centered Computing in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Chief Scientist with Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. He is also the Executive Director of NSF’s National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (https://aialoe.org).  Ashok is a Fellow of AAAI and the Cognitive Science Society, an Editor Emeritus of AAAI’s AI Magazine, and a recipient of AAAI’s Outstanding AI Educator Award.

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AI models seek to intervene in increasingly higher stakes domains, such as cancer detection and microloan allocation. What is the view of the world that guides AI development in high risk areas, and how does this view regard the complexity of the real world? In this talk, I will present results from my multi-year inquiry into how fundamentals of AI systems—data, expertise, and fairness—are viewed in AI development. I pay particular attention to developer practices in AI systems intended for low-resource communities, especially in the Global South, where people are enrolled as labourers or untapped DAUs. Despite the inordinate role played by these fundamentals on model outcomes, data work is under-valued; domain experts are reduced to data-entry operators; and fairness and accountability assumptions do not scale past the West. Instead, model development is glamourised, and model performance is viewed as the indicator of success. The overt emphasis on models, at the cost of ignoring these fundamentals, leads to brittle and reductive interventions that ultimately displace functional and complex real-world systems in low-resource contexts. I put forth practical implications for AI research and practice to shift away from model centrism to enabling human ecosystems; in effect, building safer and more robust systems for all.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Nithya Sambasivan is a sociotechnical researcher whose work is in solving hard, socially-important design problems impacting marginalised communities in the Global South. Her current research re-imagines AI fundamentals to work for low-resource communities. Dr. Sambasivan's work has been widely covered in venues like VentureBeat, ZDnet, Scroll.in, O’Reilly, New Scientist, State of AI report, HackerNews and more, while influencing public policy like the Indian government’s strategy for responsible AI and motivating the NeurIPS Datasets track. As a former Staff Research Scientist at Google Research, she pioneered several original, award-winning research initiatives such as responsible AI in the Global South, human-data interaction, gender equity online, and next billion users, which fundamentally shaped the company’s strategy for emerging markets, besides landing as new products affecting millions of users including in Google Station, Search, YouTube, Android, Maps & more. Dr. Sambasivan founded and managed a blueprint HCI team in Google Research Bangalore, and set up the Accra HCI team, in contexts with limited existing HCI pipelines. Simultaneously, her research has received several best paper awards at top-tier computing conferences.

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Industrial knitting machines are used to fabricate many complex objects, including gloves, sweaters, layered cloth, and shaped fiber reinforcement for composites. But, fundamentally, what is it that knitting machines are actually making?

Well, in a topological sense, knitting machines don't make anything at all. Any knit object, fresh off the machine, can be unraveled (continuously deformed) back into straight segments of yarn.

But that's not a very satisfying answer, so in this talk I will eschew such topological nihilism using two different approaches. Viewing knitting through a high-level lens (thinking of stitches as lying on surfaces) one can show that knitting machines can create arbitrary arrangements of 2D tubes and sheets, limited only by a resolution/depth complexity trade-off. Taking a lower-level view, one can freeze certain parts of a knit structure in order to safely deploy the tools of topology and braid theory to explore and transform knitting programs without changing their meaning.

This will be a richly-illustrated, reasonably self-contained romp through the world of knitting design tools and representations, based on both completed and ongoing work in the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab (https://textiles-lab.github.io/), with no knitting or computer graphics background required.

Speaker Bio:

James (Jim) McCann is an Assistant Professor in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. He is interested in systems and interfaces that operate in real-time and build user intuition; lately, he has been applying these ideas to textiles fabrication and machine knitting as the leader of the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2010, and worked at Adobe research, as an independent game developer, and at Disney research, before joining Carnegie Mellon as Faculty. He lives about 500ft from the Forbes Ave / Fern Hollow Creek bridge, which collapsed two days before he wrote this bio.

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This IPaT Thursday Think Tank facilitated by Tim Lieuwen, Regents Professor, David S. Lewis J. Chair in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, and executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute, will focus on a conversation discussing the previous work in phase 1 of the Commission on Research Next and the upcoming phase two work of the six goal teams.

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1. Students are our top priority.
2. We strive for excellence.
3. We thrive on diversity.
4. We celebrate collaboration.
5. We champion innovation.
6. We safeguard freedom of inquiry and expression.
7. We nurture the well-being of our community.
8. We act ethically.
9. We are responsible stewards.

Facilitated by Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, executive director of Strategic Consulting, this think tank  will highlight the G.T. Love initiative, focus on potential future research directions, and our shared mission and achieve the goals envisioned through the Georgia Tech strategic plan.

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