I am an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). I am the director of the Interactive Systems Research Center and the Affective Behavior Interaction Lab.

My primary research contributions are in the areas of affective computing and human-computer interaction and focus on measuring and modeling affect and related phenomena in real-world simulation training and education scenarios. I examine both individuals and teams to understand how affect is perceived and displayed in these complex situations. Recent projects focus on investigating the impact of stress and anxiety during training and the effect of communication technology on trainees' cognitive load. This research allows for assessing how these states are reflected in trainees' verbal and nonverbal communication toward a goal of understanding the link between internal (e.g., physiological responses such as electrodermal activity) and external (e.g., body expressions) representations of affective and cognitive states. This work informs my long-term research goal of developing and evaluating interactive systems that promote trainees' self-reflection as a mechanism to improve training and facilitate comprehension and conversation around training-related affective phenomena.

Before joining UMBC, I held postdoctoral researcher positions with Professor Ben Lok in the Virtual Experiences Research Group in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Department at the University of Florida and with Dr. Marco Gillies in the Embodied AudioVisual Interaction Group at Goldsmiths, University of London in the UK. I received a PhD in Computer Science from University College London, UK, an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Aizu in Japan, and a BA in Psychology from the University of Oregon.