information about the attendees!

The information about attendees is presented in alphabetical order

 

Alejandro Rangel Gonzalez (UABC-Ensenada)

I have been work with mobile devices(iPod, iPhone, Android Devices, etc) developing system with augmented reality, mainly focus in Ubiquitous areas

Anne Marie Piper (UCSD)

I design and build multimodal systems that exploit multitouch, pen, and/or speech input for education, medical, and therapy applications. I designed and implemented Shared Speech Interface (SSI), a multimodal application for a surface computer that allows Deaf patients to communicate with medical doctors. I have also built interface prototypes to examine the utility and accessibility of surface computing for special needs populations, including children with autism and older adults. More recently, with my collaborators I implemented the TAP & PLAY system, which is a pen-based interface that enables end-users (e.g., teachers, parents) to program their own multimodal paper documents to support language learning and communication. We have evaluated TAP & PLAY with over 100 users ranging from young children (age 3-7) for early literacy development to older adults (age 70-105) for improving social engagement.

Carlos Caloca (CICESE)

I have work mainly in computer networks research, in the fields of ad hoc networks, sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks. I also know a little in the field of security, because I did my master's degree in sensor network security. I have also work in the OSGi environment, and have experience creating some bundles. My interest also extends to all things mobile, even mobile applications in android and ios.

Catalina Ibarra (UABC-Ensenada)

T3 (THINGS THAT THINK) Cognitive therapies use traditional objects to teach children with autism age appropriate cognitive skills. During cognitive therapies children with autism often loose attention, and caregivers invest a lot of time in engaging them with the therapy providing frequent prompting while maintaining a detailed record of children's progress, and number of given prompts. To easy current challenges during therapies, tangible computing could augment familiar objects with computational capabilities to engage children with the therapy, while supporting the automatic recording of information. These "smart objects" that both children with autism and caregivers found familiar constitute an easy to use interface with computational resources that are integrated in a natural and transparent way. In this project we explore the design space for developing "smart objects" to alleviate current challenges in cognitive therapies for children with autism. We conducted a contextual study in Pasitos, a specialized clinic caring children with autism that led us to the development of "Things That Think" (T3). T3 are "smart objects" that present themselves as fun to the children, and allow caregivers to perform their therapies in a more appealing way assisting them with monitoring of relevant events during the therapy. T3 objects have an electronical "brain" composed of an accelerometer, an array of leds, a microphone, a loudspeaker, and a motor, that enables an object to "talk", "sing", "turn on", and "move" whenever the user "grab it" or "release it". A T3 object could also be used in collaboration extending its "brain" with an RFID tag and glove with RFID reader for reading face-to-face interactions such as: requests, replies and prompts. We are currently implementing the electronical "brain", and the glove for creating several T3s objects to probe our concept.

Claudia Rangel (UABC-Ensenada)

I have worked in research projects focused on creating technology that provides support to vulnerable social groups. Mainly children with autism and the elderly. The topic of my thesis focuses on providing step-by-step directions to children with autism in the execute activities of daily living with assistive technologies Often, children with autism learn how to execute some specific steps of activities without help; however, they may still have problems to complete all of the steps or follow them in sequence. They might forget the potential order, in which those steps should be executed, forget to execute some of them, or get "œstuck" in the middle of an activity. To cope with these issues caregivers use "œcookbooks", step-by-step indications that guide children with autism through the execution of an activity "“like a chef uses a cookbook to create a meal. Activity-aware technologies have the capabilities for providing step-by-step guidance to children with autism while providing caregivers with awareness of children's executed activities.

Cuauhtemoc Rivera (Universidad Michoacana)

I'm an associate professor at the School of Math and Physics at the Universidad Michoacana; I'm part of the computer science department. I teach Java and HCI courses there. Recently I've been involved in a couple of contextual design projects, one for blind people, and another one for local artisans (the latter is part of a larger project involving researchers from several mexican universities; I'm the leader of the project). In the past two years I've also been developing apps (mainly for IOS) for my University (a radio app, an interactive map, and an app for the library system).

Don Patterson (UCI)

bitcoin monitoring baby motion in the NICU context cues in IM some Mechanical Turk stuff

Garnet Hertz (UCI)

I am currently researching electronic DIY culture and writing about themes and trends in hackerspaces, maker communities, circuit benders and Arduino-based projects. I also work as a contemporary artist and explore themes of technological progress, creativity, innovation and interdisciplinarity. I often build real-world technologies that are designed to take an audience into a speculative future gone humorously astray. In the process, I try to invert the idea that technology needs to be faster, more efficient or higher resolution: innovation is often born out of doing things in a way that embraces human emotion, historical tradition, and creative obsession. My work can be found at http://conceptlab.com/ In addition to this, I am interested in constructing educational electronic kits for kids, in repurposing electronic waste, and building creative projects. I am looking for a collaborator with a background in electrical engineering (specifically lower-level microcontroller programming and circuit design) for a project building a low cost architectural-scale display system: http://conceptlab.com/pixel/

Ivan Zavala (CICESE)

We are currently developing casual and pervasive games to assist in the elderly healthcare. Right now we are designing games that could be played for this kind of users, promoting physical activity, social interactions and also conceiving mechanisms that will allow us to estimate the physical decline in this segment of the population. For that purpose we are also designing interface devices adapted for this users that could be integrated in the games mechanics.

Jed Brubacker (UCI)

I am a PhD student in Informatics at the School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine. My research focuses on digital identity, social media, representation, and the often invisible distinction between us and our data. Recently this has included studies of death in the context of social network sites, video communication at work and home, the relationship between infrastructure and self-presentation in social media, and single-use identities on craigslist Missed Connections. This work draws from human centered computing, psychology, science and technology studies, and critical theory. I am part of the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction (LUCI) and the Social and Technological Action Research (STAR) group at UCI, and previously earned my M.A. at Georgetown University in Communication, Culture and Technology, and my B.S. at the University of Utah in Psychology.

Jesus Favela (CICESE)

Pervasive computing for healthcare, mostly to assist hospital staff and to increase the quality of life of older adults and their caregivers.

Jorge Alvarez (CICESE)

Well, during my master studies I was working on a framework to create context-aware applications to browsing the Internet of Things. To do a better interaction between the applications and the Internet of Things objects I was working with Semantic in order to do facilitate data exchange, data processing, and to do a better communication. To show the information that provide the Internet of Things objects I was working with Augmented Reality. Also, I have worked on sensor networks. And finally, actually I was working on participatory sensing, opportunistic sensing, DTN, and so on.

Karen Cheng (UCI)

I have several ongoing projects. Estrellita is a personal health record system designed to improve patient-provider communication by enabling parents to monitor the health of their premature infants on a mobile phone and to share that data with healthcare providers in real time. We are currently evaluating the impact of this system on parents' well-being and infants' health. I am also working with several colleagues to understand the facilitators and barriers to the adoption of electronic medical records at the UCI Medical Center. We have collected survey data over the past two years and are beginning to analyze the data. In the past, I have worked in the area of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of my projects in Angola was to evaluate participant acceptance and willingness to disclose sensitive information about their risk behaviors to interviewers using handheld computers (i.e., PDAs).

Karina Caro (CICESE)

Karina Caro obtained her bachelors in Computer Engineering from the Culiacan Institute of Technology at Culiacan, Mexico. Caro is currently doing a masters in Computer Science at CICESE Research Center (Ensenada, Mexico). Caro's masters project, called Characterization of the use of Information and Communication Technology in Early Childhood, is a qualitative study about the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by young children. The goal of the project is to show all the factors involved in the use of ICT by children of 2 to 5 years old. Finally, Caro's research interests are human-computer interaction, child-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing and educational technology.

Kyoko Ito (UCSD)

1) Design for eco-feedback interface in buildings How could we design for eco-feedback interface in buildings? I would like to consider about the connection between human and electric consumption. I have planned a survey in order to know how people think about energy and environment. Based on the results, I would like to try the design. 2) "iFace": A proposal of a communication medium between patients with facial disorder and the doctors There are diseases with the disorder in the face although human's face is an important body site with the social role. In this study, it is focused on "œpatient's facial expression'' as a medium supporting communications between the patient with facial disorder and the doctor toward the satisfaction improvement to the patient's treatment on the medical treatment site. And, "expression to be expressed" and "difference between the expression actually expressed aiming at the expression to be expressed and the expression to be expressed" were selected as information transmitted through patient's expression. The design and development of an interface with the functions of an expression setting and an expression confirmation were carried out as an environmental setting for the patient to express selected information. Fourteen dentists in total who had the treatment experience of the facial disorder evaluated the possibility of the proposed interface as utility and a communication tool in the medical treatment site. The possibility of leading to the expression of the expectation for the patient's treatment was suggested as the results of the experiment, and concrete challenge points and the method for use in the medical treatment field were proposed. Now we are considering further experiments in UCSD and a hospital in Japan. 3) How Visualizing Biological Rhythm Entrainment Affects Children's Listening Attitude Recently, "œdiscussion" has been adopted in elementary school education in Japan. In this activity, the active participation of children is important. It is necessary to be conscious of the interaction with others for active participation in discussion. The goal of this study is to improve the attitude towards participation in discussion of children. We consider a method of making children conscious of their interaction with others by visualizing the entrainment of biological rhythm. A system based on the above-mentioned consideration was developed, and a pre-experiment that uses this system was conducted. The results show that the system has a high potential of improving children"™s attitude towards listening. Now we are considering an experiment to evaluate the system as an education tool.

Laura Pina (UCSD)

My work focuses on finding synergy between sensing technology, mobile phones, and health issues our populations face. My goal is to create systems to help people achieve their health goals.

Lee Taber (UCI)

The last project I finished was dealing with social networking sites and a psychological perspective on grief. My fellow researchers and I touched upon how people"™s posts on social networking sites can reveal particularly strong emotional disturbances, which can be detected by a program (LIWC) and in the future could be used to identify people in need of counseling.

Lisa Cowan (UCSD)

My PhD research focused on understanding and supporting lightweight social communication using visual media and mobile phones. I looked at using mobile ambient displays to support lightweight communication with Emotipix, a system that turns a mobile phone's wallpaper into a place to communicate via shared photos. I explored ubiquitous sketching with UbiSketch, an application that enables people to share paper-based information on social media in real time. I also considered how the use of projector-phones impacts face-to-face communication "” documenting usage practices and considering social implications. I have also designed an interaction technique called ShadowPuppets, which uses hand shadows as input to support collocated interaction with projector phones.

Lizbeth Escobedo (UABC-Ensenada)

I'm exploring using Augmented Reality to assist Children with Autism to reach some level of independence from their caregivers.

Luis Castro (CICESE)

I have worked on project involving migrants and their use of community websites to maintain connections to their hometowns. Also, I have worked on projects involving mobile and ubiquitous computing & older adults. Currently, I'm working with mobile phone sensing to estimate several variables of interest in geriatric care such as the frailty index.

Maythe Zuniga (CICESE)

An important feature in the healthcare of the patients is to have their clinical information in any place and opportune way. This implies to have a personal health record (PHR), which can be consulted in any moment.

Mingming Fan (UCI)

1) Mobile Phone 3D Motion Interaction: Design Algorithm to detect phone's 3D motion in real time. 2) Indoor Navigation using Phone Sensors: Using phone sensors (accelerometer, compass) to calculate user's moving direction and distance so as to navigate people easily inside the building. 3) Multi-touch Table Hub: enable touch traces consistent on the large scale multitouch talbe which consists of several sub multi-touch tables units. 4) Involuntary Gesture recognition based on accelerometer.

Moises Perez (CICESE)

Moises Perez obtained his bachelors in Computer Engineering from the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) at Tijuana, Mexico. Perez has 2 years of experience as a Quality Engineer at Sony Baja California (Tijuana, Mexico) and is currently doing a masters in Computer Science at CICESE Research Center (Ensenada, Mexico). Perez's masters project, called InCense, facilitates contextual data gathering from populations of mobile phone users. InCense is a research kit that gathers data from several different sensors to be used by people with limited technical expertise (e.g., social researcher).

Monica Tentori (UABC-Ensenada)

Much of my research is an intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study with the aim at understanding the interactions between people, technology and the environment to develop ubiquitous environments to effectively enhance humans interactions with their world and particularly to improve the lifestyle of people with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers. My past work involved the design of ubiquitous applications in support of hospital work. My research interests include ubiquitous computing, HCI, Medical Informatics, Mobile Computing and CSCW.

Nima NIkzad (UCSD)

I work on the CitiSense project, which is interested in tracking air pollution exposure and promoting healthy change in users through the use of mobile phone applications and user carried sensors. My own work has primarily been concerned with energy management on the mobile phone, but I am also interested in developing new ways of keeping users engaged in participatory sensing systems and how to drive users to collect missing or high-value data.

Raymundo Cornejo (CICESE)

I am a PhD student at CICESE in the Mobile & Ubiquitous computing lab. Since my master thesis, I have worked on technology for older adults with the aim of seamlessly connecting them with their relatives. Currently I am working on a second prototype of an enhanced digital frame that allows the older adult to be a user of a Social Networking Site (i.e. SNS) and gain ambient awareness of their relatives. I am interested on how technology can be designed to provide SNS technologies to older adults and fit their social needs.

Ruy Cervantes (UCI)

My interests are in the areas of CSCW, HCI, socio-technical infrastrcutures, technological innovation, entrepreneurship, education and learning. My work is directed towards understanding the socio-technical infrastructures support people when working, learning and collaborating, and in how digital media can be used to extend these infrastructures. Previous joining to the Ph.D. program at UC Irvine I was working as a software consultant, both in Mexico and in India. For my dissertation I am performing an ethnographic study of the emerging Internet industry in Mexico. In my research I am trying to understand how start-up companies creating Internet products in mid-income countries are building the environment they need to succeed in world markets, within the constraints of their country. Entrepreneurs in Mexico are cooperating to create social, cultural, material, and technological infrastructures needed to recreate innovation practices and build startups. To understand how these infrastructures are created I follow the people in the Internet industry in Mexico across a variety of locates, both online and in physical spaces, where they interact. The findings from my research will enrich our understanding of innovation practices in emerging countries, and how technologies could further support these practices. Another project that influenced my current work was an ethnographic study of low-cost laptops use for learning in Mexican elementary schools, were I became aware of the complexities of building the socio-technical infrastructures to make digital media technologies truly useful for learning and working.

Valeria Soto (CICESE)

Activityr recognition using wearable sensors

William Griswold (UCSD)

http://citisense.ucsd.edu UbiSketch CoupleVibe

Yasmin Magallanes (UDLAP)

During my master"™s degree I worked a proposal to support a process of innovation and collaboration using horizontal multitouch surfaces, which is called InnovIMM. The main objective of this project was to exploit the potential of interactive surfaces to support innovation. This arose due to the difficulties presented by the tools developed for this purpose and the lack of a standard representation of a model that integrates gestures and graphical elements to collaborate naturally. InnovIMM proposes a set of gestures and pattern recognition to enter and manipulate elements (audio, images, videos, text, freehand drawings, etc.) from the position in which the user is located around the table. The model also incorporates an intuitive and sequential organization of ideas. This allows for a smooth and efficient navigation. The form of navigation facilitates the organization and representation of knowledge during the work sessions. After studying usability and user experience, we conclude that the model integrates gestures and graphical elements optimally to streamline a process for generating ideas for an innovation session. Users rated the proposed model as an attractive, intuitive and enjoyable way to represent, manipulate and record ideas. The set of gestures were considered mostly as simple to perform and learn. This represents a minimal cognitive load to collaborate and generate ideas. Now, the purpose of my PhD is to move forward in the development of natural interfaces, contribute to research in terms of graphical elements and multi-touch gestures to surfaces and explore best elements to innovate.

Yunan Chen (UCI)

Yunan Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics, University of California Irvine. She was trained as a medical doctor previously and has a Ph.D. in information systems. She has conducted various research projects in examining the use of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems in clinical settings, as well as studying the information behaviors about chronic patients at home settings. Her current work focus lies investigating the Personal Health Record (PHR) system in mediating patient-provider interactions.