I am a postdoctoral scholar in the Digital Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine, and an incoming Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. I research and design technologies that promote language and literacy development, STEM learning, and wellbeing for children and families.
I currently focus on AI-powered conversational agents, exploring whether and how these speech-based technologies play the role of a language partner or learning companion for children, thereby impacting children’s social interactions and developmental processes.
Within this question, I focus in particular on the impact on children growing up in underrepresented communities, co-designing with local families and community organizations to ensure that the media we develop are best suited to build on the community’s linguistic and cultural assets. I am greatly honored to have been named the UC Irvine Public Impact Distinguished Fellow in recognition of the potential of my research to significantly enrich people’s lives.
My research has appeared in premier academic venues across psychology, education, and HCI (e.g., Child Development, Computers & Education, and the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), receiving a number of best paper nominations and awards. My research partners include PBS KIDS, Sesame Workshop, and IBM. My work has been supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
I have mentored over 30 undergraduate and graduate students at UCI, helping first-generation and immigrant students win national fellowships and university research awards, present and publish their findings in peer-reviewed outlets, and gain admission to graduate programs at Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and other top universities.
What’s New
Start as an Assistant Professor at UMich in Fall 2022
I am excited to share that I will be joining @UMichEducation as an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences & Technology in Fall 2022...
Two Papers Accepted to ACL 2022
We have two papers accepted to ACL 2022, both focusing on automatic question generation in educational settings:
CHI 2022 Paper on Human-AI Collaborative Agent for Supporting Interactive Storybook Reading
I’m excited to share that we have another paper accepted to CHI 2022 after R&R, “StoryBuddy: A Human-AI Collaborative Agent for Parent-Child Interactive ...
Completion of a large scale benchmark dataset of dialogic questions for reading comprehension
With funding from Schmidt Futures, I’m pleased to announce that my team has completed the development of a benchmark dataset of dialogic questions for childr...
CHI 2022 Paper on Conversational AI and Informal Science Learning from Videos
Our paper, “Elinor’s Talking to Me!”:Integrating Conversational AI into Children’s Narrative Science Programming, has been accepted to CHI 2022.
$3M NSF Grant to Develop Conversational Videos with PBS KIDS
I am thrilled that our team (UCI and PBS KIDS) was awarded a $3 million NSF AISL grant to continue our research on conversational videos! The project will it...
CLS 2021 Symposium on Social Interaction in Digital Learning
We held our symposium, “Promoting Social Interaction in Young Children’s Digital Learning,” in the Connected Learning Summit. This symposium reviews three re...
$40K Funding from Schmidt Futures to Develop a Benchmark Dataset
I am excited to have received $40,000 from the Schmidt Futures as the PI to develop a benchmark dataset of dialogic questioning. This dataset represents high...
AIED 2021 Demo on Conversational Videos
We demo’d our conversational videos at the Artificial Intelligence in Education conference.
CHI 2021 Paper on Conversational Interfaces for Children
I am delighted to present our paper on designing conversational agents for young language learners at CHI2021. In this paper, we carried out a critical conte...