Hi there! I’m a CSE senior passionate about creating physical, interactive things to solve human problems. In the lab I am currently working on Interactiles, which improves the accessibility of mobile phones by introducing tangible, tactile interaction to touchscreens, and Don’t Touch My Belly, a maternity shirt that reacts when the wearer’s pregnant belly is touched without asking and aims to explore themes of consent and women’s bodies. My portfolio can be seen here: http://dropr.com/tracytran
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Jasper O’Leary
Jasper O’Leary
I am a PhD student in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE). Previously, I earned my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. I study how digital fabrication technology can move beyond its focus on making trinket-scale objects for a universal “maker.” Instead, I imagine how we can leverage digital fabrication to build longer-lasting infrastructure such as urban installations and ad-hoc shelters. How can these tools could be useful in a diverse set of people and needs, rather than just appealing to one universal user? How can we build effectively at the body or building scale? What role do different materials play in this process? I approach these questions through a mix of research through design, ethnography, and system-building.
Website: jasperoleary.com
Nicole Riley
Nicole Riley
I am a computer science major from Bellevue, Washington. I am a post-baccalaureate student in CSE (I already have a degree in neurobiology and psychology from UW so I am happy to talk about brains as well as tech). In the Allen School I am the treasurer of ACM-W, a CSE Student Advisory Council at large representative, and a Society of Women Engineers Girls Who Code lead. I have tutored within the CSE department and TAed a variety of course (14x and 311). In the lab, I am working on the UW Experience project working on a dashboard that measures participant compliance.
James McCann
James McCann [research page] [disney page] is an Associate Research Scientist at Disney Research Pittsburgh. He develops systems and interfaces that operate in real-time and build user intuition, with — at present — a focus on textiles artifact design and manufacturing. He also makes video games as TCHOW llc, including recent releases “Rktcr” and “Rainbow“. He obtained his PhD in 2010 from Carnegie Mellon University.
Lea Albaugh
Lea works on computational fabrication of textiles at Disney Research Pittsburgh’s Textiles Lab. Additionally, her art practice focuses on mediating social and environmental interactions for physical and virtual bodies, primarily via the media of computer games and clothes.
Jessica Hodgins
Jessica Hodgins is a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She is also VP of Research, Disney Research, running research labs in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Boston. Prior to moving to Carnegie Mellon in 2000, she was an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. Her research focuses on computer graphics, animation, and robotics with an emphasis on generating and analyzing human motion. She has received a NSF Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship, and a Sloan Fellowship. She was editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2000-2002 and ACM SIGGRAPH Papers Chair in 2003. In 2010, she was awarded the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award.
Henny Admoni
Henny Admoni is a postdoctoral fellow at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she works on assistive robotics and human-robot interaction with Siddhartha Srinivasa in the Personal Robotics Lab. Henny develops and studies intelligent robots that improve people’s lives by providing assistance through social and physical interactions. She studies how nonverbal communication, such as eye gaze and pointing, can improve assistive interactions by revealing underlying human intentions and increasing human-robot communication. Henny completed her PhD in Computer Science at Yale University with Professor Brian Scassellati. Her PhD dissertation was about modeling the complex dynamics of nonverbal behavior for socially assistive human-robot interaction. Henny holds an MS in Computer Science from Yale University, and a BA/MA joint degree in Computer Science fromWesleyan University. Henny’s scholarship has been recognized with awards such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, and the Palantir Women in Technology Scholarship.
Sidd Srinivasa
Siddhartha Srinivasa is the Finmeccanica Associate Professor at The
Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He works on robotic
manipulation, with the goal of enabling robots to perform complex
manipulation tasks under uncertainty and clutter, with and around
people. To this end, he founded and directs the Personal Robotics Lab,
and co-directs the Manipulation Lab. He has been a PI on the Quality
of Life Technologies NSF ERC, DARPA ARM-S and the CMU CHIMP team on
the DARPA DRC.
Sidd is also passionate about building end-to-end systems (HERB, ADA, HRP3, CHIMP, Andy, among others) that integrate perception, planning, and control in the real world. Understanding the interplay between system components has helped produce state of the art algorithms for object recognition and pose estimation (MOPED), and dense 3D modeling (CHISEL, now used by Google Project Tango).
Sidd received a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1999, an MS in 2001 and a PhD in 2005 from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He
played badminton and tennis for IIT Madras, captained the CMU squash team, and likes to run ultra marathons.
Amy Hurst (co-advised with Scott Hudson)
Amy Hurst is an Associate Professor of Human-Centered Computing (http://hcc.umbc.edu/) in the Information Systems department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). She is a member of the Interactive Systems Research Center (http://isrc.umbc.edu/) and runs the Prototyping and Design Lab (http://pad.umbc.edu/). Amy is an accessibility researcher who is interested in understanding the relationships between technology and empowerment. She is actively studying the DIY / Maker movement and the opportunities for digital fabrication in assistive technology, therapy, and special education.
Dan Ashbrook
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies and the Department of Computer Science of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.My research is in the area of human-computer interaction, where I concentrate on new interaction techniques, devices, and applications. Historically I have concentrated on wearable and mobile computing, with the goal of allowing people to be less focused on their technology and more engaged with the world, while still reaping the creativity and productivity benefits of their devices. My current research continues this thread while adding a second focus on helping non-experts more easily understand and use personal fabrication technology such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC routers.
More information can be found on my website at http://fetlab.rit.edu/dan.