Dr. Joanne Yoo is a researcher at Australian Catholic University specializing in autoethnography and creative writing in educational contexts. Her work bridges personal narratives with professional practice in teacher development. Research interests focus on: Transformative learning through autobiographical writing Teacher identity formation Embodied educational practices Decolonizing methodologies in education Publications primarily explore autoethnographic approaches to understanding teacher experiences, with recent works examining cultural navigation and maternal perspectives. Research employs qualitative methodologies including narrative inquiry and phenomenological analysis. Supervises graduate projects in creative writing pedagogy and qualitative research methods. Current investigations examine temporality in academic writing practices.
Holly Pester is Senior Lecturer in creative writing and poetics at the University of Essex, holding a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London (2014) on sound poetics mediation. Creative research examines intersections of tenancy politics, archival practice, and experimental form. Research investigates housing precarity through poetic form, feminist archival methodologies, and sonic experimentation. Recent work explores rest as political practice and institutional voice critique through performance-based interventions. Publications demonstrate consistent integration of social critique with formal innovation across poetry, critical essays, and sound art. Recent outputs increasingly engage with sonic economies and feminist epistemologies in archival contexts. Creative commissions include site-specific sound installations and collaborations exploring bureaucratic language and social architectures. Current projects examine the sonic dimensions of care labor and housing insecurity.
Sarah Creem-Regehr is Professor and Chair of Cognition and Neural Science at the University of Utah's Department of Psychology. She directs the Vision, Audition, Action in Space & Time (VAAST) laboratory, researching human spatial perception and navigation in real, virtual, and augmented environments. Her research examines: Navigation in Extended Realities (XR) Perception of spatial gist during locomotion Multisensory cue integration for navigation Spatial cognition in low vision populations Depth and affordance perception in XR Creem-Regehr's publications demonstrate consistent methodological innovation in eye tracking, motion capture, and VR/AR technologies for studying spatial behavior. Recent work focuses on perceptual calibration across realities, accessibility solutions for visual impairments, and user-centered navigation systems. She currently advises six graduate students and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. Her laboratory develops novel paradigms for studying spatial cognition through immersive technologies.
Kate Mingjie Ji is a Senior Lecturer in Finance and Revenue Management at Oxford Brookes Business School, University of Oxford Brookes. She holds a PhD in Tourism Management from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and an MSc in Accounting and Finance from the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on tourist behavior, including embodied experiences, spatial patterns, and pricing strategies. She has secured multiple grants, such as the British Academy-funded project on managing tourist congestion and a National Natural Science Foundation of China grant. She co-supervises PhD students exploring Chinese female solo tourists and social media in travel experiences. Her work has been recognized with Best Paper Awards at the CHME Conference 2016. Education: PhD in Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University MSc Accounting and Finance, University of Birmingham PGDP in Business Administration Research Interests: Her studies explore how tourists perceive and navigate spaces, the role of technology in tourism digital platforms, and the socio-economic impacts of tourism. She employs mixed-methods approaches, including ZMET and spatial analysis. Grants & Awards: Principal Investigator: British Academy Grant (£9,818) on Chinese tourists and UK congestion (2019–2021) Co-investigator: National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant (RMB280,000) on electronic consumer goods (2021–2024) Advising & Grants: Supervises two PhD students and collaborates on projects like the 'Managing Tourist Congestion for Sustainable Destination Recovery Post-COVID-19'. Her work bridges academic and practical challenges in hospitality and tourism. Professional Roles: Editorial board member of The Service Industries Journal and reviewer for key journals. Prior roles include Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Surrey and Senior Auditor at PwC.
JaLisa Williams, M.S.W., LCSW is a Lecturer at the Smith College School for Social Work (SSW), based in Northampton, MA. She holds affiliations with multiple Denver-based institutions, including MSU Denver, Regis University, and the University of Denver. Her work spans education, therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions, with a focus on fostering self-awareness and social justice. Education: B.S., Metropolitan State University of Denver M.S.W., Metropolitan State University of Denver Research & Practice: Williams specializes in transformational justice, racial trauma healing, and radical pedagogies. She creates spaces for dialogue around diversity, liberation, and mindfulness, particularly for Black and marginalized communities. Her teaching emphasizes experiential learning to challenge conventional perspectives on social positioning and systemic inequities. Professional Engagements: As a therapist and founder of a mindfulness business, she offers interventions across diverse settings. Recent contributions include publications on community accountability frameworks and shared trauma navigation (SSW News, 2022–2023). Labs/Teams: Her work integrates therapeutic practice, education, and small business ventures to promote holistic healing and social change.
Dr. Alexia Galati is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, leading the Cognition in Interaction Lab. Her research focuses on situated cognition, particularly how perspective-taking unfolds in social and environmental contexts. Key areas include language use, multimodal communication, spatial cognition, and health psychology applications. Education: B.A. Honors in Psychology, Stanford University M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Chicago Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, Stony Brook University Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Cyprus’s Experimental Psychology Lab Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at UC Merced (2016-2018) Research interests emphasize how individuals adapt linguistic/non-linguistic behavior to coordinate with conversational partners, leveraging grants like NSF’s Perception, Action, and Cognition program. Current work explores interpersonal coordination in collaborative tasks and health-related perspective-taking. Teaching includes courses on cognitive processes, language psychology, and research methods. Grants supported by NSF and EU’s Marie Curie program highlight interdisciplinary focus. No listed formal awards, though her Marie Curie fellowship and NSF grant indicate recognition. Labs/Teams: Directs Cognition in Interaction Lab, collaborates with UCLA’s Co-Mind Lab and University of Cyprus teams on spatial cognition projects.
Dr. Hooman Samani is a Reader and Senior Lecturer at the University of the Arts London's Creative Computing Institute, specializing in creative robotics and AI-driven social service robotics. He holds a PhD in Robotics from the National University of Singapore and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). His interdisciplinary research spans creative robotics, human-robot interaction, and machine learning, with applications in healthcare, entertainment, and cultural exploration. Dr. Samani's research integrates robotics with art and design, exploring how machines can serve as creative collaborators. His work focuses on developing emotionally intelligent systems, socially assistive robots, and novel interaction paradigms. Recent projects investigate robotic theatre, therapeutic applications, and ethical AI frameworks, emphasizing human-centered design and cultural diversity in technology. Publications show a strong focus on experimental robotics applications, with recurring themes in human-robot interaction, ethical AI, and creative expression. Recent works demonstrate increased attention to healthcare applications and interdisciplinary approaches combining robotics with performing arts. Awards and recognition include features in Discovery Channel, BBC, and CNN for innovations like Lovotics and Kissenger, and recognition as a global talent by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. He has participated in international RoboCup competitions and holds multiple patents. Dr. Samani founded the AIART Lab (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technology Laboratory) and leads student research in creative robotics. His teaching includes course leadership for BSc Creative Robotics, emphasizing hands-on experimentation and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Elyssa Twedt is an Associate Professor of Psychology at St. Lawrence University, specializing in spatial cognition across cognitive psychology, visual perception, and environmental psychology. She teaches Sensation and Perception with Lab Research Methods with Lab Cognitive Science Seminar Introduction to Psychology Her research spans four main areas: Perception, memory, and navigation in natural/virtual spaces Well-being impacts of environmental design Statistical modeling of perceptual data Open science applications in teaching Recent work focuses on individual differences in spatial cognition. Key article trends include: Environmental psychology and restorative spaces Perceptual scaling to bodily characteristics Statistical method critiques Interdisciplinary applications of spatial cognition Scientific awards include 2013 Action Teaching Award Jefferson Foundation Grant (2010) Published Action Teaching Report (2014) Students collaborate on projects involving Virtual reality environment design Tool use and spatial perception Technological medium impacts on cognition at her lab in Flint Hall, Room 107.
Jeremy Bailenson is the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and holds the Thomas More Storke Professorship in the Department of Communication. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor (by courtesy) in the Graduate School of Education and Symbolic Systems Program. His research focuses on the psychology of Virtual and Augmented Reality, examining how immersive experiences alter perceptions of self and others. B.A., University of Michigan (1994) M.S. and Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology, Northwestern University (1996, 1999) Post-Doctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara (2000-2004) Bailenson’s lab develops systems for virtual social interaction, exploring transformations in education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health. His work has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation for over 25 years and has produced over 200 academic papers across communication, computer science, education, environmental science, law, linguistics, marketing, medicine, political science, and psychology . He has received numerous accolades including the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford (2007) and IEEE’s Virtual/Augmented Reality Technical Achievement Award (2020) . Bailenson co-authored the Amazon Best-seller Infinite Reality , cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and authored Experience on Demand , reviewed by major global publications. Bailenson’s lab has created six Tribeca Film Festival VR documentaries and exhibited at venues from The Smithsonian to The Superbowl. He has served as Director of Graduate Studies in Communication for over a decade and currently teaches courses like Advanced Topics in Human Virtual Representation and Virtual People .
Meghan Rose Donnelly is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the self-formation processes within Indonesian Catholic nun communities, emphasizing subjectivity, performance, and moral experience. She employs performance ethnography and interdisciplinary methods, including directing ethnographic plays like Nearly Collapsed and Convent Calling . Education: PhD in Social Anthropology (2022), London School of Economics & Political Science Masters, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Bachelors, Williams College Her work explores how nuns navigate communal life through embodied practices, blending anthropology with theater to interrogate themes of identity, adaptation, and emotional labor. Recent research critiques universalized trauma narratives through ethnographic insights from religious communities.
Dr. Lucy Cheke is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of Studies for Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Sidney Sussex College. Her research focuses on learning and memory processes across health and disease, with emphasis on sub-clinical deficits associated with obesity, long COVID, and AI cognition evaluation. She leads the Cambridge Lab (http://www.camblab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/), developing translational cognitive assessments for human, animal, and computational models. Key projects include the COVCOG studies on post-COVID cognitive impacts and the Animal-AI Environment for benchmarking artificial intelligence against animal cognition. Affiliations: Department of Psychology, Sidney Sussex College Roles: Academic Staff, Director of Studies, Principal Investigator Research Interests: Episodic memory development, comparative cognition, AI evaluation frameworks, and cognitive deficits in neurological conditions. Her work bridges psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, emphasizing translational tools like the Animal-AI Testbed. Publications highlight longitudinal studies on long-COVID’s cognitive effects, AI benchmarking methods, and object permanence research in embodied agents. She actively contributes to debates on general intelligence metrics and common-sense reasoning in language models. Grants & Advising: Supervises PhD students and collaborates on grants exploring cognitive aging, obesity-related memory deficits, and AI ethical evaluation. Her team’s work has been featured in interdisciplinary journals and conferences. Labs/Teams: Cambridge Cognition Lab (CamBlab), part of the Department of Psychology’s research network.
Pulkit Agrawal is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), holding dual appointments in the departments of Artificial Intelligence and Decision-making (AI+D), Computer Science (CS), and Electrical Engineering (EE) within the School of Engineering. He is a core member of the Embodied Intelligence Community of Research, focusing on advancing intelligent systems that interact with the physical world through robotics, AI, and machine learning. His work emphasizes bridging simulation and real-world applications in robotics, human-robot interaction, and medical technology. Key research areas include reinforcement learning for robotic manipulation, simulation-to-real transfer, and embodied intelligence. Notable projects include developing methods for robust home robot training using real-to-sim-to-real approaches, tactile-driven object retrieval systems, and AI-driven glucose control models for post-surgical care. He also explores ethical AI in healthcare and assistive technologies for cognitive impairment monitoring. Dr. Agrawal’s contributions span robotics hardware design (e.g., DEXOS hand exoskeleton), neuro-inspired algorithms (e.g., grid cell-based map building), and scalable robot learning via crowdsourced environments. His work often integrates interdisciplinary methods from control theory, computer vision, and biomedical engineering. He leads the MIT CSAIL Embodied Intelligence group and collaborates on projects like OpenEQA for embodied question answering and DexHub for large-scale robot data collection. His research has been recognized through promotions within EECS and featured in outlets like MIT News for innovations in home robotics and AI-driven medical solutions. He advises on grants related to intelligent systems and maintains active collaborations across academia and industry.
Tianna Bruno serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in interdisciplinary environmental research that confronts racialized ecological injustices through critical geographic frameworks. Education: Ph.D. in Geography, University of Oregon (2021) Research Interests: Dr. Bruno pioneers the integration of Black Environmental Geographies with Critical Physical Geography , examining how Black communities navigate environmental degradation through spatial and ecological relationships. Her work employs dendrochronology to analyze tree-ring records as embodied archives of both ecological trauma and resilience. Current projects center on Texas landscapes while developing comparative frameworks across the Black diaspora, emphasizing environmental justice praxis that centers subaltern survival strategies within political ecology. Scientific Awards: No awards documented in source materials Advising and Grants: No student advising relationships or external grant funding are specified in available documentation. Research dissemination occurs through peer-reviewed publications in leading geography journals. Laboratories and Research Teams: No dedicated laboratories or formal research collectives are referenced, though methodological work involves field-based dendrochronological analysis and community-engaged environmental record interpretation.
Dr. Marius Hoggenmueller is a Lecturer at The University of Sydney's School of Architecture, Design and Planning, specializing in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), urban robotics, and autonomous vehicle communication. His research focuses on designing socially acceptable and context-aware technologies for urban environments, including public interfaces, pervasive displays, and AV-pedestrian interaction systems. He leads projects exploring robot help-seeking strategies, adaptive urban interfaces, and ethical deployment of autonomous systems. Current research students include Abhinav Sood (Creative Collaborative AI), Xinyan Yu (Human-Robot Collaboration), and Qiuming Zhang (Urban Robotics Safety). Dr. Hoggenmueller has received the University of Sydney Strategic Education Grant 2024 and holds an extensive record of publications in top venues like ACM CHI, IEEE HRI, and Frontiers in Computer Science. Education: PhD in Media Architecture and Interaction Design (university unspecified) His work bridges design research and technical innovation through projects like 'Woodie' (urban placemaking robot) and 'Context-based Interface Prototyping.' Key contributions include scalable AV-pedestrian communication systems, emotional robotic eyes for AVs, and frameworks for probing future urban technologies. Dr. Hoggenmueller collaborates with industry partners on smart city initiatives and has organized workshops on holistic HMI design for automated vehicles. His lab explores tangible toolkits for AV interface design and participatory methods for urban technology deployment.
Souyoung Jin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College. Her research focuses on Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Cognitive Science with expertise in video understanding. She earned her B.S. from Dongguk University, M.S. from KAIST, Ph.D. from UMass Amherst, and completed a postdoc at MIT's CSAIL under Aude Oliva. She teaches courses like Machine Learning and Deep Learning, and leads research on AI systems mimicking human perception. Her lab explores multimodal tasks and synthetic data applications. She is an Area Chair for WACV 2025 and actively recruits motivated students for her lab. Education: B.S., Dongguk University M.S., Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst Postdoc, MIT Research Interests: Dr. Jin develops AI systems to understand human experiences through video analysis. Her work spans video understanding, synthetic data applications, and cognitive-inspired models. She emphasizes temporal context in low-resource regimes and cross-modal learning. Recent projects include BOLD Moments (fMRI-video datasets) and LangNav (language-based navigation). Grants & Labs: Her research is supported by grants focusing on synthetic video representations and multimodal fusion. She leads Dartmouth's Video Understanding Lab, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations between computer vision and cognitive science.
