Each year, the CRA Undergraduate Research Awards (URA) program recognizes outstanding undergraduate students in North America, emphasizing traditionally underrepresented groups in computing fields. This year, one of CSEs undergraduate researchers, Liza Vimalkumar Jivnani, received the Honorable Mention for her work in Affective Computing under the supervision of Professor Shaun Canavan.
Affective computing is an interdisciplinary field that uses a spectrum of disciplines in addition to computer science to study human emotions, including psychology and cognitive science. A Way of life, that's how I see my research in affective computing, said Liza. Specifically, her work focuses on predicting loneliness from self-reported metrics.
Loneliness first occurred as a problem when I moved from India to the United States for my undergraduate degree. One of the most dominating feelings I experienced was loneliness. said Liza. In her paper, she investigates three main research questions:
1) Is it possible to predict loneliness using self-reported data over multiple days?
2) How does the number of days affect the predictions?
3) Do we need personalization to accurately predict loneliness?
She is currently working on a journal extension of the paper where she investigates how do various demographics correlate with loneliness. Loneliness often remains hidden behind the faade of social interactions, making it a silent underestimated public health concern.
It's a profound statement of honor toward my advisor, Dr. Shaun Canavan, whose mentorship breathes vitality into my research endeavors. I am inspired to do more, to do better, said Liza.
To find out more about the CRA, .