Cornell Tech - Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) & Social Computing

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Law and Policy
Data & Modeling
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) & Social Computing
Security & Privacy

Computational technologies and ideas are increasingly pervasive in human life. For millions of people around the globe, computers and mobile phones have become the de facto communication medium. At the same time, access to and proficiency in computing technologies is rapidly becoming a major equity issue worldwide.

The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Social Computing faculty at Cornell Tech study the design, implementation, impact and broader implications of computing technologies in everyday human activities. Particular areas of research interest include accessibility, educational technology, Computer Science education, Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD), Computer-supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and social computing.

Our faculty are committed to working both locally, in New York City, as well as globally, using the city as a base to connect to international networks in business, governance and civil society. We are also committed to practical impact through entrepreneurship and deep engagement with community and industry partners.

Shiri Azenkot

Associate Professor

Shiri Azenkot is an Associate Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science field at Cornell University. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Computer Science Department at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in accessibility and interaction on new platforms. She conducts this research with a fantastic group of students who are part of the Enhancing Ability Lab, which she directs. Before arriving at Cornell Tech, Shiri was a PhD student in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.

Full Bio about Shiri Azenkot

Tanzeem Choudhury

Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor in Integrated Health and Technology

Tanzeem Choudhury is a professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in Information Sciences and a co-founder of HealthRhythms Inc. She obtained her bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from University of Rochester and her master’s and Ph.D. from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2004. Professor Choudhury has been at Cornell since 2011 and joined Cornell Tech in 2019. At Cornell, Tanzeem directs the People-Aware Computing group, which works on inventing the future of technology-assisted wellbeing. Prior to Cornell, she was a member of the computer science faculty at Dartmouth and worked at Intel Research. She is a recipient of the MIT Technology Review TR35 award, NSF CAREER award, and a TED Fellowship.

Full Bio about Tanzeem Choudhury

Nicola Dell

Assistant Professor

Nicola Dell is an Assistant Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. Her research interests are in information and communication technologies for development (ICTD), human-computer interaction (HCI) and mobile computing. Nicki’s main focus is on designing, building and evaluating systems that improve the lives of under-served populations in low income regions. To do this, she partners with NGOs and government ministries to create and deploy systems that have a positive impact in the world. Nicki completed her PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.

Full Bio about Nicola Dell

Deborah Estrin

Associate Dean and Robert V. Tishman ’37 Professor

Deborah Estrin is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech where she holds The Robert V. Tishman Founder’s Chair, serves as the Associate Dean for Impact, and is an Affiliate Faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine. Estrin’s research activities include technologies for caregiving, immersive health, small data, participatory sensing, and Public Interest Technology.

Before joining Cornell University Estrin was the Founding Director of the NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at UCLA; pioneering the development of mobile and wireless systems to collect and analyze real-time data about the physical world. Estrin co-founded the non-profit startup, Open mHealth, and has served on several scientific advisory boards for early-stage mobile health startups. She is currently an Amazon Scholar (2019-present).

Estrin is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, and was chosen as a 2018 fellow of the MacArthur Foundation.

Full Bio about Deborah Estrin

Wendy Ju

Associate Professor

Wendy Ju is an Associate Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science field at Cornell University. Dr. Ju comes to Cornell Tech from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University, where she was Executive Director of Interaction Design Research, and from the California College of the Arts, where she was an Associate Professor of Interaction Design in the Design MFA program. Her work in the areas of human-robot interaction and automated vehicle interfaces highlights the ways that interactive devices can communicate and engage people without interrupting or intruding. Dr. Ju has innovated numerous methods for early-stage prototyping of automated systems to understand how people will respond to systems before the systems are built. She has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, and a Master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Her monograph on The Design of Implicit Interactions was published in 2015.

Full Bio about Wendy Ju

Mor Naaman

Professor

Mor Naaman is a Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. Professor Naaman’s Social Technologies Lab has been looking at technologies to support the peer economy by increasing awareness, coordination and trust. Communities in urban environments — and underserved communities in particular — could benefit from the positive economic and social outcomes offered via collaborative consumption services. For example, one project examines how trustworthiness is established in services like Airbnb, and another project uses location data traces to reinvent how people socially interact with their local communities.

Full Bio about Mor Naaman

Rajalakshmi Nandakumar

Assistant Professor

Rajalakshmi Nandakumar is an Assistant Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science department at Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. from University of Washington in Computer Science and Engineering in 2019. Her research focuses on developing wireless sensing technologies that enable novel applications in various domains including mobile health, user interfaces and IoT networks. She developed the first contactless smartphone-based sleep apnea diagnosis system that was licensed by ResMed Inc. and now used by millions of users for sleep staging. She was recognized with the UW Medicine Judy Su Clinical Research award, Paul Baran Young Scholar award by the Marconi Society and also named as the rising star in EECS by MIT.

Full Bio about Rajalakshmi Nandakumar

Tapan Parikh

Associate Professor

Tapan Parikh is an Associate Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. His research group‘s goal is to support young people in developing a critical literacy about the computational infrastructures that surround them and to empower them to become active creators and decision makers within this ecosystem. Current projects include 1) an online mapping tool that supports young people in understanding and advocating for their communities, 2) a collaborative web development environment that allows them to make authentic websites using professional software engineering practices, 3) a web literacy curriculum that helps them understand the implementation and economics of web search, and 4) a digital making tool that helps young people envision and implement 3D mockups of low-cost housing structures.

Full Bio about Tapan Parikh

Alexander Rush

Associate Professor

Alexander “Sasha” Rush is an Associate Professor at Cornell Tech, where he studies natural language processing and machine learning. Sasha received his PhD from MIT supervised by Michael Collins and was a postdoc at Facebook NY under Yann LeCun. His research interest is in deep learning text generation, generative modeling, and structured prediction. His group also supports open-source development, including the OpenNMT machine translation system. His research has received several best paper awards at NLP conferences and an NSF Career award. He can be reached @srush_nlp.

Full Bio about Alexander Rush

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Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) & Social Computing

Shiri Azenkot

Tanzeem Choudhury

Nicola Dell

Deborah Estrin

Wendy Ju

Mor Naaman

Rajalakshmi Nandakumar

Tapan Parikh

Alexander Rush

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