Timothy Bickmore, Ph.D,

Director
I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Computer and Information Science. My research focus is on the development of Relational Agents, especially in the area of health counseling applications. Prior to joining Northeastern, I was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine. I received my PhD from the MIT Media Lab, studying under Profs. Rosalind Picard (Affective Computing) and Justine Cassell (Gesture and Narrative Language).

Website: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bickmore

Donna Byron, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist
My own research focuses on computational modeling for referring expressions in dialog. Recently, I have concentrated on the special problems that come up for embodied, situated dialog agents.
Website: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dbyron

Kristin (Krissy) Mainello

Research Project Coordinator
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Daniel Schulman

CS Ph.D. Student
My interests are in the analysis and modeling of human behavior, particularly the behavior of a human counselor, and in the development of computer agents which can reproduce this behavior. I plan to study the verbal and nonverbal behavior of participants in a counseling relationship spanning multiple interactions, focusing on how this behavior changes over the course of the relationship.
Website: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/schulman

Laura Pfeifer

CS Ph.D. Student
Laura Pfeifer is a Ph.D student in the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University. She received her BA in Computer Science from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, and a MS in Computer Science from Northeastern University. Her interests lie within the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Specifically, she is interested in health systems and how they can positively impact patient care.
Website: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/laurap

Langxuan (James) Yin

CS Ph.D. Student
My research interest mainly lies in the impact of cultural differences on human computer interaction. The research question I'm currently investigating concerns the role that language and cultural cues play in the process of a health counseling conducted by a relational agent. I'm also interested in narrative generation and non-verbal behaviors of virtual characters in a game environment.

Thomas Brown

Exercise Physio MS Student
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Jenna Zaffini

Juan Fernandez

Research System Admin
Juan Fernandez is a system technician who works at the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University located in Boston. As a recent graduate of Northeastern University with a Bachelor's Degree in Information Science, he has received various awards from the university, including graduating with Honors and being chosen for the Best Undergraduate Research Award in 2008. In his current role, he designs and maintains health systems for use in research by the College of Computer and Information Science. These duties combine his special interest in the medical, psychology and programming fields, where his ability to speak fluent Spanish assists greatly in the development of multi-lingual systems. Juan currently lives in East Boston with his parents as the oldest child, helping them take care of his five siblings. When not working, Juan likes to play soccer, spend time with his brothers, and play guitar for various social events. Juan can be reached by email at ragfernandez@gmail.com.

Rukmal Fernando

CS MS Student
Rukmal's interests lie in tactile extensions to conversational agents, in making agents rely less on scripted dialogue yet be more adaptive, and conversational systems in general. Rukmal also contributes to some of the client-side software technologies and speech synthesis interfaces used within the group..
Personal home page: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/rukmal/

Lazlo Ring

I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Dolphy Fernandes

CS MS Student
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Zoe Zhang

CS MS Student
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Prasanna Pilla

CS MS Student
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Liang Zhang

CS MS Student
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.

Jonathan Lawitts

Animation Student
I'm interested in the development and study of Relational Agents, which are computer agents designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with people.