Category: News

 

CAHMP hosted a mini symposium on Wednesday Oct. 5, featuring three speakers and a panel on topics connecting technology and humans. CAHMP’s co-director, Sanmay Das, served as the moderator. More than 50 faculty and students participated in this event either in person or virtually. This event is among many of CAHMP’s organized efforts in catalyzing the engagements and collaborations among researchers from across the campus and disciplines.

Three speakers and their topics are:

Dr. Ray Hong, Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at George Mason University. Topic: Alignable AIs: Bridging the gap between the Ways Human Thinks and Deep Neural Model Works through Interactive Design

Dr. Gregory Stein, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at George Mason University. Topic: Explainable Interventions: Understanding and Correcting Robots that Plan Despite Missing Knowledge

Dr. Sera Linardi, Associate Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Founding Director of the Center for Analytical Approaches to Social Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh. Topic: Building a data science for social justice ecosystem to sustain impact

To become a speaker at future CAHMP symposiums, please contact CAHMP assistant director, Peng Warweg – [email protected].

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Mason HCI Community Building 

The Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships (CAHMP) and the Institute of Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) co-organized on June 21-22 a two-day Human Computer Interaction (HCI workshop. The workshop signaled the beginning of a new stage in interdisciplinary research and community building around HCI at Mason.  

 

This hybrid event brought together thirteen Mason’s Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers across the School of Computing, the School of Art, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Workshop participants built community, identified gaps and opportunities in the national HCI research landscape, outlined core research expertise and capabilities in the Mason HCI community in direct alignment with national priorities, and formulated synergistic research development activities. 

 

The second day featured a visit by Dr. Andruid Kerne, current NSF Program Director in the Directorate for Computer Information Science and Engineering, and provided the workshop participants with the opportunity to engage directly with an NSF Program Director on relevant HCI-related opportunities across the Foundation.  

 

This workshop marks the beginning of a new day for HCI research at Mason, as well as the beginning of direct, guided collaborations between IDIA and the Transdisciplinary Centers. 

 

Mason Participants:  

Sanmay Das, Professor of Computer Science, SoC; Co-director, CAHMP 

Craig Yu, Associate Professor of Computer Science, SoC 

Myeong Lee, Assistant Professor of Information Sciences, CEC

Brittany Johnson, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, SoC 

Kevin Moran, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, SoC 

Gerald Matthews, Professor of Psychology, CHSS 

Shanshan Cui, Associate Professor, School of Art 

Ziyu Yao, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, SoC 

Zhisheng Yan, Assistant Professor of IST, SoC 

Yotam Gingold, Associate Professor of Computer Science, SoC 

Vivian Motti, Assistant Professor of IST, SoC 

Vania Neris, Associate Professor – Department of Computing – Federal University of São Carlos – Brazil; Visiting Scholar – Department of Information Sciences and Technology – George Mason University 

Peng Warweg, Assistant Director, CAHMP 

Amarda Shehu, Professor of Computer Science, SoC; AVP of Research, IDIA 

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CAHMP’s co-founder/director, Amarda Shehu has been named Mason’s Associate VP of Research for IDIA starting May 25, 2022. In her new role, Amarda will help to shape Mason’s institutional landscape of computing and digital society, while continuing to promote Mason’s research and innovation. Amarda is one of the three founding leaders of CAHMP. Together with Brenda Bannan and Dave Lattanzi, the three co-directors envisioned, brought a team of faculty around that vision, and ultimately were successful in obtaining funding for CAHMP as a Provost Transdisciplinary Center in 2019. CAHMP would not have existed without their visionary proposal in 2019. Under their leadership and CAHMP’s amazing faculty community, we have achieved many feats together, including the submission of the mega proposal of AI Institute, which, in turn, led to a slew of proposals and awards. In addition to our research capacity, CAHMP is also gaining traction on other critical initiatives at Mason, including curriculum development and entrepreneurship. 

With Amarda stepping out, we are fortunate and glad to announce that Sanmay Das, Professor of Computer Science, has very graciously accepted to step into Amarda’s role as CAHMP’s new co-director.

As a CS professor, Sanmay has broad interests across AI, machine learning, and computational social science. His research interests are in designing effective algorithms for agents in complex, uncertain environments, and in understanding the social or collective outcomes of individual behavior. Of late, he has been particularly interested in understanding the societal implications of the use of algorithms in allocating scarce societal resources. In the broader AI community outside Mason, Sanmay serves in several roles, including as the chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence and as a member of the board of directors of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. Sanmay served as one of the Co-PIs on CAHMP’s AI Institute proposal in 2020 soon after he joined Mason. Since then, he has taken on various leadership roles here at Mason. Sanmay has been instrumental to CAHMP’s mission at advancing human-machine partnership in research, education and technology transfer, and will now continue with that commitment in a new leadership role as a CAHMP co-director. His interdisciplinary research embodies what is best about CAHMP. 

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CAHMP’s Shanshan Cui (Associate Professor, School of Art) and Myeong Lee (Assistant Professor, Information Science) led a Summer Team Impact Grant project on building a digital archive on the Chinese Anti-Rightist Campaign in the 1950s. This interdisciplinary project has not only brought a rich and innovative research experience to Mason students, but also is expected to impact the field of history and humanities education. Please check out their story on the George below, or here.

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CAHMP MIX Flyer 12-21-21 for email
Application before January 31, 2022 is highly encouraged. Late applications may be accepted on a case-by-case basis. Click here to sign up.

 

Activities include workshops, seminars and final business idea competition. The program runs from February to May 2022. 

Undergraduate and graduate (Master’s and Ph.D.) students are all encouraged. Students can sign up individually, or as a team. If you’d like to be paired with a partner or team, please let us know. 

 

Contact: Peng Warweg  [email protected]

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