Broadly speaking, my research interests fall in the area of human-computer interaction (HCI), which focuses on many facets of the relationship between humans and computers. This includes more obvious topics, such as designing interfaces, as well as less evident areas, such as our relationship to technology and how it influences our use of it. HCI is ultimately an overlap of computer science, engineering, design, and psychology.

My research interests focus on emulating effective collaborative strategies on robots. As robots become more ubiquitous, they will start working with humans on a number of tasks. In particular, robots are well suited to assist humans in tasks that require following a large set of instructions, understanding complex tasks, or assisting when precision or physical strength or endurance is required.

My recent work has been with collaborators in the computer sciences at UW–Madison on developing computational tools for human-robot interaction design. You can hear more about this work by watching David Porfirio's talk at UIST 2018 on our paper:

Some of my other work has been on the introduction of collaborative robots in manufacturing settings. My CHI 2015 paper on the social implications of introducing these robots as co-workers won a Best of CHI award. You can hear more about this work in an interview I gave with a local station in Madison, or by watching the video below produced by Stanford Scholar.

I am also interested in CS education, particularly in how we can make both computer science and human-robot education accessible to non-traditional populations, such as K-12 students and working adults.

Previous research experiences include my masters and PhD work with Dr. Bilge Mutlu in the Human-Computer Interaction lab, a semester-long independent study with Dr. Jignesh Patel on indexing the human genome, and a senior thesis with Dr. Sriram Mohan on indexing graph databases.