Cecilia Alm

Cecilia Alm is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and serves as the Program Director for the MS in AI in the School of Information. She holds affiliations with multiple RIT programs including the Center for Human-aware AI, CLaSP Lab, and Ph.D. programs in Cognitive Science and Computing & Information Sciences. Dr. Alm earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Her research focuses on AI and machine learning applied to linguistic/multimodal sensing, dialogue processing, and human-centric AI systems. Key areas include affective computing for the Deaf community, ethical AI frameworks, and multimodal emotion recognition. She leads NSF-funded projects such as the IRES AI-PROWIL program with University West, Sweden, and collaborates with Gallaudet University on visual prosody in sign languages.

Recent work emphasizes diversity in AI education, human-AI interaction ethics, and accessible technologies for marginalized groups. Over 60 conference/journal publications and multiple grants (e.g., NSF awards totaling $2.5M) reflect her impact. Dr. Alm advises the CLaSP Lab, mentoring students in AI, computational linguistics, and speech processing. Current courses include ethics of AI, machine learning fundamentals, and research methods for AI systems.

• Lead the AWARE-AI initiative and NSF-funded research collaborations
• Developed multimodal datasets like FUSE and MULTICOLLAB
• Recipient of 2021-2026 NSF grants for AI education and human-centered computing