Cristina Conati
Professor & Distinguished Scholar, Sauder School of Business
Academic Information
M.Sc. (Honors), University of Milan (1988); Research Staff Member, Dida*El Milan (1988-1989); Research Fellow, I.R.S.T. Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (1989-1991); Research Programmer Carnegie Mellon University (1992); M.Sc., University of Pittsburgh (1995); Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh (1999); Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia (1999-2005), Associate Professor, University of British Columbia (2006 - 2016), Professor (2016); Distinguished Scholar, Sauder School of Business (2020)
Interests
My goal is to integrate research in Artificial Intelligence, Human Computer Interaction and Cognitive Science to make complex interactive systems increasingly more effective and adaptive to the users' needs. I am particularly interested in extending the range of user features that can be captured in and efficiently processed by a computational user model - from purely cognitive features (knowledge, goals, preferences), to meta-cognitive skills (e.g., the capability of effectively exploring a large information space), personality traits and emotional reactions. The aim is to widen the spectrum of information that an interactive system can use to dynamically adapt its behavior to a user's needs. My students and I are currently applying this research to: (1) generate adaptive visualizations [I]; (2) capture and adapt to a user's reasoning processes by using eye-gaze information [II] and decision-theoretic methods [IV]; (3) Provide adaptive support to interface customization [III]; (4) devising emotionally intelligent agents for educational games [V];