Dakuo Wang
Opening speaker – Wednesday, June 19th: From Human-Human Collaboration to Human-AI Collaboration
Human-Centered AI (HCAI) refers to the research effort that aims to design and implement AI techniques to support various human tasks, while taking human needs into consideration and preserving human control. Prior work has focused on human-AI interaction interface design and explainable AI research (XAI). However, despite these fruitful research results, why do many so-called “human-centered” AI systems still fail in the real world? In this talk, I will discuss the human-AI interaction paradigm, and show how we can learn from human-human collaboration to design and build AI systems that lead to a successful interaction paradigm, especially in this LLM era. This work serves as a cornerstone towards the ultimate goal of human-AI collaboration, where AI and humans can take complementary and indispensable roles to achieve a better outcome and experience.
Biography
Dr.Dakuo Wang is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University. His research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), artificial intelligence (AI), and computer-supported team collaboration (CSCW), with a focus on the exploration, development, and evaluation of human-centered AI (HCAI) systems. The overarching research goal is to democratize AI for every person and every organization, so that they can easily access AI and collaborate with AI to accomplish real-world tasks better — the “human-AI collaboration” paradigm. Before joining Northeastern, Dr.Wang worked as a research lead at IBM Research, and a principal investigator at MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. He got his Ph.D. from the University of California Irvine (“how people write together now” co-advised by Judith Olson and Gary Olson). He has worked as a designer, researcher, and engineer in the U.S., China, and France. He has served in various organizing committees, program committees, and editorial boards for conferences and journals, and ACM has recognized him as an ACM Distinguished Speaker.
Luigina Ciolfi
Closing speaker – Friday, June 21st: The case for a practice-centred approach to cultural heritage technologies
Museums and cultural heritage sites have been a fertile research ground tor CSCW and HCI research, often complementing curatorial and interpretation strategies involving digital technologies that have developed within the heritage sector. Historically, cultural heritage has been an important domain to be studied within CSCW and HCI from the point or view of challenging assumptions with notions of “use”, “user” and “interaction” around technology, and of adopting a situated design approach, although in recent years attention to this domain (particularly within CSCW) has decreased. Reflecting on issues at both domain-specific and disciplinary levels, this talk will make the case for a practice-centred approach to research on cultural heritage technologies, arguing for the need to keep developing in-depth understandings of how heritage and the (present and future) technologies that facilitate encountering it become part of people’s lives. Examples from past and current projects in the heritage domain will be used to Illustrate and reflect on evolving processes or technology design involving “users”, “participants and “co-creators” in a socially-situated and materially entangled way. A practice-centred approach will also be argued as contributing to current critical heritage discourse, and as a way to examine influential technological trends such as Al and their application for cultural heritage interpretation.
Biography
Luigina Ciolfi is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at University College Cork, Ireland. Her core research interest is the human experience of and practices around digital technologies, particularly when collaboration, cooperation and coordination are involved. As well as HCI, she contributes to the field of CSCW – Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. She is an academic member of Lero – The Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software
Luigina holds a master degree from the University of Siena (Italy) and a Ph.D. from the University of Limerick, both specialising in Human-Computer Interaction. She has extensive work experience in academia in Ireland, the UK and Italy. She was previously Professor of Human Centred Computing at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), Lecturer and Senior Researcher at the University of Limerick, and held visiting roles at Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute and at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Luigina has published prolifically, authored notable books, and presented extensively worldwide. She serves as an ACM Distinguished Speaker, Associate Editor for the CSCW Journal, and actively engages in professional communities like EUSSET and ACM. Passionate about education, Ciolfi has taught diverse subjects within human-centered computing and played key roles in curriculum development at various institutions. Her specialties include HCI, user-centered design, participatory design, and project management.
