Gregory Abowd

Gregory Abowd

Gregory Abowd

Dean of the College of Engineering, Northeastern University

Gregory D. Abowd is Dean of the College of Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. Prior to joining Northeastern in March 2021, he was a Regents’ Professor and held the J.Z. Liang Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also served as Associate Dean of Research and Space for the College of Computing. Abowd is an internationally renowned and highly cited scientist, well known for his contributions in the general area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and specifically for his groundbreaking research in ubiquitous computing.

In more than 26 years at Georgia Tech, Dr. Abowd initiated bold and innovative research efforts, such as Classroom 2000 and the Aware Home, as well as pioneering innovations in autism and technology, health systems, CampusLife, and a joint initiative with engineering in computational materials. He was on the founding editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine, and was founding Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in HCI and The Proceedings of the ACM in Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies. He also founded the non-profit Atlanta Autism Consortium in 2008 to serve and unite the various stakeholder communities in Atlanta connected to autism research and services.

Dean Abowd’s contributions to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing have been recognized through numerous awards. In 2008, he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. That same year, he was inducted into the ACM CHI Academy, the most prestigious honor for researchers in HCI. In 2009, he received the ACM Eugene Lawler Humanitarian Award for his work in autism and technology. As of 2020, he graduated 30 Ph.D. students, 20 of whom have gone on to successful careers at top universities around the world.

Dr. Abowd received the degree of B.S. in Honors Mathematics in 1986 from the University of Notre Dame. He then attended the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom on a Rhodes Scholarship, earning the degrees of M.Sc. (1987) and D.Phil. (1991) in Computation from the Programming Research Group in the Computing Laboratory. From 1989-1992 he was a Research Associate/Postdoc with the Human-Computer Interaction Group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York in England. From 1992-1994, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Software Engineering Institute and the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

dean@coe.northeastern.edu

Website

Research Focus Areas:
  • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
Additional Research:
Data Security & Privacy; Healthcare Security; Human-Computer Interaction; Ubiquitous Computing; Software Engineering

IRI Connections:
IRI And Role

Dhruv Batra

Dhruv Batra

Dhruv Batra

Associate Professor; School of Interactive Computing

Dhruv Batra is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and AI, with a focus on developing intelligent systems that are able to concisely summarize their beliefs about the world with diverse predictions, integrate information and beliefs across different sub-components or `modules' of AI (vision, language, reasoning, dialog), and interpretable AI systems that provide explanations and justifications for why they believe what they believe. In past, he has also worked on topics such as interactive co-segmentation of large image collections, human body pose estIMaTion, action recognition, depth estIMaTion, and distributed optimization for inference and learning in probabilistic graphical models. He is a recipient of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award (2016), the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award (2014), Army Research Office (ARO) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award (2014), Virginia Tech College of Engineering Outstanding New Assistant Professor award (2015), two Google Faculty Research Awards (2013, 2015), Amazon Academic Research award (2016), Carnegie Mellon Dean's Fellowship (2007), and several best paper awards (EMNLP 2017, ICML workshop on Visualization for Deep Learning 2016, ICCV workshop Object Understanding for Interaction 2016) and teaching commendations at Virginia Tech. His research is supported by NSF, ARO, ARL, ONR, DARPA, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. Research from his lab has been extensively covered in the media (with varying levels of accuracy) at CNN, BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg Business, The Boston Globe, MIT Technology Review, Newsweek, The Verge, New Scientist, and NPR. From 2013-2016, he was an Assistant Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he led the VT Machine Learning & Perception group and was a member of the Virginia Center for Autonomous Systems (VaCAS) and the VT Discovery Analytics Center (DAC). From 2010-2012, he was a Research Assistant Professor at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC), a philanthropically endowed academic computer science institute located on the University of Chicago campus. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 and 2010 respectively, advised by Tsuhan Chen. In past, he has held visiting positions at the Machine Learning Department at CMU, CSAIL MIT, Microsoft Research, and Facebook AI Research.

dbatra@gatech.edu

Website

  • Personal Research Website
  • Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Collaborative Robotics
    • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
    Additional Research:

    Machine Learning; Computer Vision; Artificial Intelligence


    IRI Connections:

    Rosa Arriaga

    Rosa Arriaga

    Rosa Arriaga

    Associate Professor

    Arriaga is a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher in the School of Interactive Computing. She uses psychological concepts, theories and methods to address fundamental topics of HCI and Social Computing. Her current research interests are in the area of chronic care management and mental health. She designs mHealth systems that address gaps in chronic care and mental health management. The computational systems she designs: foster engagement, facilitate continuity of care, promote patient self-advocacy, and mediate communication between patient and healthcare providers.

    arriaga@cc.gatech.edu

    404-385-4239

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Lifelong Health and Well-Being
    Additional Research:
    Bioinformatics; Human-Computer Interaction; Developmental Psychology; Chronic Care Management

    IRI Connections:

    Ronald C. Arkin

    Ronald C. Arkin

    Ronald C. Arkin

    Regents' Professor; School of Interactive Computing
    Director; Mobile Robot Laboratory

    Ronald C. Arkin received the B.S. Degree from the University of Michigan, the M.S. Degree from Stevens Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1987. He then assumed the position of Assistant Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he now holds the rank of Regents' Professor and is the Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory. He also serves as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech since October 2008. During 1997-98, Professor Arkin served as STINT visiting Professor at the Centre for Autonomous Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. From June-September 2005, Prof. Arkin held a Sabbatical Chair at the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan and then served as a member of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse, France from October 2005-August 2006.

    arkin@cc.gatech.edu

    (404) 894-8209

    Office Location:
    GVU/TSRB

    College of Computing Profile Page

  • Mobile Robot Lab
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Autonomy
    • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
    Additional Research:

    Artificial intelligence; Robotics; Robot ethic; Autonomous agents; Mobile Robots and Unmanned Vehicles; Multi-Agent Robotics; Machine Learning


    IRI Connections:

    Annie Anton

    Annie Anton

    Annie Anton

    Professor

    Annie Anton, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, which she chaired until 2017. Previously, she served as a professor in the Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University, where she was director of the CSC Policy and Compliance Initiative and a member of the NCSU Cyber Defense Lab. In 2010, she chaired the NC State University Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee. In 2008, she chaired the NC State Public Policy Task Force. Anton's research focuses on methods and tools to support the specification of complete, correct behavior of software systems used in environments that pose risks of loss as a consequence of failures and misuse. This includes systems in which the security of personal and private information is particularly vulnerable. Current extensions to this work, include the analysis of federal security and privacy regulations, and compliance practices. Anton is the founder and director of ThePrivacyPlace.org, a research group of students and faculty at Georgia Tech, CMU, NC State and UMBC. This group is interested in technologies that assist practitioners and policy makers in meeting the challenge of eliciting and expressing policies and regulations (a form of requirements). These tools help ensure that software systems are aligned with the privacy polices and regulations that govern these systems. Her professional activities include a notable combination of multi-disciplinary research and education. She is co-founder of the annual Requirements Engineering and the Law Workshop (RELAW). She is a former associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, cognitive issues subject area editor for the Requirements Engineering Journal, and the International Board of Referees for Computers & Security. Antón has served on various boards, ᅠincluding: ᅠPresident Obama's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, the NIST Information Security & Privacy Advisory Board, the IEEE Computer Society Research Board, an Intel Corporation Advisory Board, the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board. ᅠShe is a former member of the U.S. DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, the CRA Board of Directors, the NSF Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate Advisory Council, the Distinguished External Advisory Board for the TRUST Research Center at U.C. Berkeley, the DARPA ISAT Study Group, the USACM Public Policy Council, the Advisory Board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees, the Microsoft Research University Relations Faculty Advisory Board, the CRA-W, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board (GTAB), and Corporate Secretary for Trekking for Kids, Inc.

    aa16@gatech.edu

    404.894.8591

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Cybersecurity Public Policy
    Additional Research:
    Data Security & Privacy;

    IRI Connections:

    David Anderson

    David Anderson

    David Anderson

    Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    David V. Anderson received the B.S and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University and the Ph.D. degree from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 1993, 1994, and 1999, respectively. He is currently a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Anderson's research interests include audio and psycho-acoustics, machine learning and signal processing in the context of human auditory characteristics, and the real-time application of such techniques. His research has included the development of a digital hearing aid algorithm that has now been made into a successful commercial product. Anderson was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for excellence as a young educator and researcher in 2004 and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in the same year. He has over 150 technical publications and 8 patents/patents pending. Anderson is a senior member of the IEEE, and a member the Acoustical Society of America, and Tau Beta Pi. He has been actively involved in the

    david.anderson@ece.gatech.edu

    404.385.4979

    Office Location:
    TSRB 543

    ECE Profile Page

    Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Bioengineering
    • Biotechnology
    • Computer Engineering
    • Electronics
    • Machine Learning
    • Micro and Nano Device Engineering
    • Miniaturization & Integration
    • Optics & Photonics
    Additional Research:

    Audio and Psycho-AcousticsBio-DevicesDigital Signal ProcessingLow-Power Analog/Digital/Mixed-Mode Integrated Circuits 


    IRI Connections:

    Brian Magerko

    Brian Magerko

    Brian Magerko

    Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Digital Media

    magerko@gatech.edu

    Website

    University, College, and School/Department
    Research Focus Areas:
    • Platforms and Services for Socio-Technical Frontier
    • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
    Additional Research:
    Interactive Narrative; Serious Game Design Development; Cognitive Architechtures; Intelligent Agents; Human-Computer Interaction; Educational Media; Improvisation; Cognitive Science

    IRI Connections:

    Agata Rozga

    Agata Rozga

    Agata Rozga

    Research Scientist II

    Agata Rozga is a psychologist with expertise and 13 years of experience forging a new interdisciplinary research area at the intersection of computing and psychology called computational behavioral science. The research vision is to transform the measurement, analysis, and understanding of health-related behaviors by leveraging advances in sensing, wearable and mobile technologies, and computational analysis methods. The ultimate goal is to develop tools that can lead to better detection, monitoring, and treatment of a variety of chronic health conditions.

    One key area Dr. Rozga’s research has focused on is understanding early trajectories and predictors of social communication in children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In her most recent work, she is applying novel computational methods to longitudinal measures of communication behavior to understand different pathways to language in autism, including failure to acquire spoken language by age 5. Dr. Rozga’s research has recently expanded to include a focus on Mild Cognitive Impairment, with an eye toward developing novel AI-based systems to help monitor cognitive and functional decline in everyday activities, to deliver appropriate in-situ supports, and to support care networks.

    Dr. Rozga serves as the Director of Translational Research for the Georgia Tech-led NSF National AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING), and as the Programs and Research Director for the Technology Core of the Cognitive Empowerment Program at the Emory Brain-Health Center. She was previously the Head of Product for Diligent Robotics, https://www.diligentrobots.com/.

    agata@gatech.edu

    404-894-2304

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Lifelong Health and Well-Being
    • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
    Additional Research:
    Computational Behavioral Science; Applications of Machine Learning to Developmental Health

    IRI Connections:

    Peter Swire

    Peter Swire

    Peter Swire

    Associate Director, Policy

    Peter Swire, J.D., is Associate Director of Policy for the Institute for Information Security & Privacy. Swire has been a privacy and cyberlaw scholar, government leader, and practitioner since the rise of the Internet in the 1990's. In 2013, he became the Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia institute of Technology. Swire teaches in the Scheller College of Business, with appointments by courtesy with the College of Computing and School of Public Policy. He is senior counsel with the law firm of Alston & Bird LLP. Swire served as one of five members of President Obama's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. Prior to that, he was co-chair of the global Do Not Track process for the World Wide Web Consortium. He is a senior fellow with the Future of Privacy Forum, and a policy fellow with the Center for Democracy and Technology. Under President Clinton, Swire was the chief counselor for privacy in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget -- the only person to date to have U.S. government-wide responsibility for privacy policy. In that role, his activities included being White House coordinator for the HIPAA medical privacy rule, chairing a White House task force on how to update wiretap laws for the Internet age, and helping negotiate the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor agreement for trans-border data flows.Under President Obama, he was special assistant to the President for economic policy. Swire is author of five books and numerous scholarly papers. He has testified often before the Congress, and been quoted regularly in the press. He has served on privacy and security advisory boards for companies including Google, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft, as well as a number of start-ups. Swire graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and the Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

    peter.swire@scheller.gatech.edu

    404-385-3279

    Office Location:
    Scheller 4163

    Website

    University, College, and School/Department
    Research Focus Areas:
    • Cybersecurity Public Policy
    Additional Research:
    Data Security & Privacy

    IRI Connections:

    Nicoleta Serban

    Nicoleta Serban

    Nicoleta Serban

    Professor
    Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Professor

    Nicoleta Serban is the Peterson Professor of Pediatric Research in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.

    Dr. Serban's most recent research focuses on model-based data mining for functional data, spatio-temporal data with applications to industrial economics with a focus on service distribution and nonparametric statistical methods motivated by recent applications from proteomics and genomics. 

    She received her B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Theoretical Statistics and Stochastic Processes from the University of Bucharest. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University.

    Dr. Serban's research interests on Health Analytics span various dimensions including large-scale data representation with a focus on processing patient-level health information into data features dictated by various considerations, such as data-generation process and data sparsity; machine learning and statistical modeling to acquire knowledge from a compilation of health-related datasets with a focus on geographic and temporal variations; and integration of statistical estIMaTes into informed decision making in healthcare delivery and into managing the complexity of the healthcare system.

    nicoleta.serban@isye.gatech.edu

    404-385-7255

    Office Location:
    Groseclose 438

    Departmental Bio

  • Laboratory Site
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Platforms and Services for Socio-Technical Frontier
    Additional Research:
    Statistics; Data Mining; Health Analytics; Health Systems; Enterprise Transformation

    IRI Connections: