Speaker: Dr. Christine Lisetti Florida International University, Miami When: Friday, Oct 19th, 2007 Time: 2:00pm Where: ECS 243 (HPDRC Conf. Room)

Abstract:

We describe how the recently acknowledged essential role of emotions in human communication and decision-making has motivated the creation of a new field of investigation within computer science – Affective Computing. We present MAUI, the paradigm we have developed for studying Multimodal Affective User Interfaces which aims at building socially intelligent interfaces that can adapt appropriately to the user's emotional state, personality and preferences in various contexts. We show some of our results in emotion interpretation of physiological signals captured via bio-sensors, and in emotion expression on graphical facial avatars. We discuss some examples of how socially Intelligent User Interfaces (IUIs) are proving useful – if not necessary – for some of the latest technologies emerging in inter-disciplinary domains involving socio-emotional content and we point to current and future projects.

Biography:
Dr. Christine Lætitia Lisetti is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS) at Florida International University. She joins FIU from Eurecom Institute where she was a Professor and the Principal investigator of various research awards funded by the European Commission (EC), EUREKA Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA), the Provence-Alpes Cote d'Azur (PACA) Regional R&D Program and ST MicroElectronics. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Florida International University in 1995 and went to Stanford University where she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow jointly in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Psychology. She received the Individual Research Award from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and has been granted support from federally funded agencies such as the Office of Naval Research (ONR), US Army STRICOM, and NASA Ames. She is the author of over seventy scientific articles, she has co-chaired several international events on Affective Computing and has been invited speaker at international conferences. She has served as an expert for many research funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (USA), the European Commission (Belgium), the ‘Fonds de Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies’ (Canada), and the ‘Agence Nationale de la Recherche’ (France).