9/12/2018 Pervasive Sensing and Health – Human-Centered and Ubiquitous Computing Lab

Our research on pervasive sensing focuses around the concept of Computational

Ethnography which borrows the in-depth understanding of activity and people’s behavior
from ethnography and anthropology, and combine it with the potential of capturing large
sets of rich multimodal data from environmental and body-worn sensors and
technology. Through the use of a variety of tracking technology (body-tracking, eye-
tracking, social media, etc.) we study human behavior in context and the interaction of
individuals with technology.

To support pervasive sensing we

developed Lab-in-a-Box — a novel
multimodal data collection
infrastructure based on eye,
body, gesture, voice and activity
tracking — and we enhanced our
analysis and visualization tools to
better understand large amount
of collected data. This includes
the extension and integration
of ChronoViz, our analysis tool for
multimodal time-synchronized
data, as well as novel web-based
visualization and data analysis
tools.

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Our tools and techniques are

used for in-depth study of activity
in the wild, for instance
we characterize interaction with
Electronic Medical Records and
understand patient-physician
communication, to study sign
language, to understand the
ergonomics of laparoscopic and
robotic surgery, to uncover
multimodal cues of neurological
disorders such as stroke, and to
exploit social interactions online
as a support for real-world
intervention in the context of
HIV/AIDS.

Ubiscope

Ubiscope, the Ubiquitous Computing Microscope is a new kind of microscope for

understanding people through the unobtrusive and pervasive sensing of
physiological and behavioral data. As the microscope enabled uncovering new
understanding and supported key scienti c advances, UbiScope acts as a similar
proxy for understanding and supporting human activity.

UbiStroke: Multimodal Computational Assessment of Stroke

ErgoKinect: Detection of Ergonomically Incorrect Posture during Laparoscopic Surgery
E ect of Packaging on Smoking Perception and Behavior: a Randomized Control Trial

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Funding

Publications

Computational Ethnography

The goal of this project is to accelerate observational analysis by employing multi-

modal pattern recognition capabilities to pre-segment and tag records and increase
analysis power by collecting multimodal activity and  enable the investigation of
macro-micro relationships of people’s interaction sin the wild, among themselves and
with technology.

QUICK: Quantifying Electronic Medical Record Usability to Improve Clinical Workflow

Hands That Speak: Studying Complex Human Communicative Body Movements

Funding

Publications

Connected and Open Research Ethics

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The employment of pervasive sensing technology opened up the way for a critical
consideration of research ethics. This is especially important with regards to the
collection of behavioral, social, and personal data in clinical or health-related settings.
To study these important ethical dilemmas, we created the CORE (Connected and
Open Research Ethics) initiative and are actively investigating how to rede ne
research ethics.

Funding

Publications

Social Media as a Sensor

We live in an era where much of our lives are represented online through a variety of
social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The intense communication
that happens across friends and acquaintances and the networks that are created
around those exchanges of textual and multimedia messages create incredible
opportunities to better understand a variety of behavioral clue that might help
resolve health and healthcare related problems. We are using a mixed approach
based on natural language processing and network analysis to capitalize on these
issues to help drive intervention, speci cally in the setting of HIV and Physical Activity.

PIRC-Net: Characterizing HIV at-risk

SMART: Using Social Media and Mobile Technologies to Promote Improved Health Behaviors

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Funding

Publications

Understanding Patient-Physician Communication

Communication in the medical o ce between physician and patient is challenging.

This is often complicated by third party in the room such as relatives or an
interpreter if the patient is not mother language and by the presence of the
Electronic Health Record (EHR). We want to better understand the system de ned by
the medical o ce and the role that people, artifacts and technology play in this
environment to inform the design of the next generation interactive tools and
visualization.

Funding

Publications

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Archived Projects

Publications – Pervasive Sensing and Health

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