Are issues like privacy, security and access truly being addressed by computer system engineers? Are these systems accessible to all ethnic, racial, and lingual groups? Are they just? Do they support diversity? These are just a few of the multi-faceted issues that were recently discussed at Kent State University during the winter break.
The 13th Intelligent Human-Computer Interaction (IHCI 2021) Conference was hosted by Kent State University on December 20-22. A hybrid format provided both virtual access as well as in-person sessions at the Design Innovation Hub on the Kent Campus. Javed Khan, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Computer Science served as a co-host of the event and Jong-Hoon Kim, Ph.D., professor and director of the Advanced Telerobotics Research Lab (ATR) served as the event’s program chair. Many other faculty, staff and students contributed to the organization and management of the conference.
The IHCI is an annual international conference in the Human-Computer Interaction field that explores research challenges emerging in the complex interaction between machine intelligence and human intelligence. This year’s theme was “Intelligent Interaction Beyond Physical Limits”. Topics included user interface and user experience design (comprising visual and natural language interaction to application of artificial intelligence), machine learning, data analytics, and applied perception for building improved and effective interfaces for communication and interaction with information systems and appliances.
The event featured 138 submitted papers (67 accepted papers), five keynote speakers and 10 invited speakers, 12 unique sessions and 169 expert reviewers. Contributors came from 22 different countries.
“What the researchers are dealing with is how to make the computer systems more relevant, effective and useful for our society,” Khan said. “Fifty years back we were concerned with how to make them more efficient, accurate, faster, but now these interfaces lay between humans as a society and extremely capable computing systems. We're not just building all these exciting systems like smart cars and other devices; researchers must make sure these are not only intelligent in a human individual sense now. The systems we build need to be just, unbiased, and encourage diversity. It has become interdisciplinary. In this conference, we saw computer scientists even conversing with clinical psychologists, musicians, and lawyers.”
The Best Conference Paper was “Validating Pre-Requisite Dependencies through Student Response Analysis” co-authored by Manjushree D. Laddha, Swanand Navandar and Laxman Netak. Other top paper topics included Alzheimer’s dementia recognition, cybersecurity, mindfulness, remote monitoring of disability, input devices for gaming, interactive visualization, spare parts distribution networks, smart wearable fall detection, altitude control, and wearable keyboards among several others.
To see the full list of best paper awards, visit: https://www.ihci.cs.kent.edu/index.php/awards/
“In computing, what we are discussing today is most likely what we have to address as a society, as a whole, two to five years down the road,” Khan said. “Students are getting a complimentary education with what we can teach in our courses and in our labs, paired with the content of this conference. As they move into the workplace, the knowledge they are gaining in this conference is vital.”
“Thanks to everyone who contributed to this festival of ideas where ideas can meet, interact and accelerate the next generation innovation to benefit us as a society and the globe,” Khan said.
To learn more about the Department of Computer Science at Kent State, visit: http://www.kent.edu/cs