Justine Cassell, Ph.D

Justine Cassell holds the AT&T Research Chair and is a full professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Communication Studies at Northwestern University, with courtesy appointments in Linguistics, Psychology, and Learning Science.  She is also the director of the Northwestern Center for Technology and Social Behavior, and the director of the new doctoral program in Technology and Social Behavior.  Before coming to Northwestern, Cassell was a tenured professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directed the Gesture and Narrative Language Research Group.  In 2001, Cassell was awarded the prestigious Edgerton Faculty Award at MIT; in 2008 she was awarded the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Leadership Award; in 2009 Cassell was made an ACM Distinguished Lecturer.  She spent 2008-2009 on sabbatical at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS).  Cassell's research builds on her multidisciplinary background: she holds undergraduate degrees in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth and in Lettres Modernes from the Universite de Besançon (France). She holds a M.Phil in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and a double Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Linguistics and Psychology.  After having spent ten years studying verbal and non-verbal aspects of human communication through microanalysis of videotaped data she began to bring her knowledge of human conversation to the design of computational systems.  Her current research investigates the relationship between cultural, linguistic and social phenomena, and how this intersection plays out in the display and deployment of identity, both in real and virtual humans. Cassell has authored more than 100 journal articles, conference proceedings and book chapters on these topics, and has given more than 50 keynote addresses at international conferences.

Find out when Justine will be speaking!
Presenting: Getting by with a Little Help from your (Virtual) Friends

Yolanda A. Rankin

Yolanda A. Rankinis Research Scientist at IBM Research Almaden in San Jose, CA.  Her primary research interests falls along three trajectories:  1. the design and evaluation of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) as collaborative spaces that promote knowledge acquisition among inhabitants and serve as the ideal platform for innovative, self-service technologies; 2. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as unorthodox pedagogical tools for mainstream literacy and Second Language Acquisition (SLA); and 3. Human Computer Interaction as a method for engineering service systems for developing countries and emerging markets.  Yolanda accumulated more than six years experience in the telecommunications industry at Lucent Technologies-Bell Labs first as a software engineer developing IS41 wireless features such as Over the Air Activation Feature and later as first tier customer technical support for wireless service providers, successfully managing Y2K deployment and TDMA Overlay for SBC/Ameritech Midwest markets.  As a senior program manager at Luxcore Networks in Atlanta, GA, Yolanda managed the product development cycle of optical networking subsystems. In 2003, Yolanda founded the non-profit organization Aspire2B Inc. whose mission encompasses utilizing technology to facilitate career preparation and expose underrepresented groups K - 16 to career opportunities in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Yolanda has received numerous honors and awards, including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Northwestern University Graduate School Fellowship, Alliance of Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Scholarship, the Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship, Tougaloo College Presidential Scholarship, and the Columbia Broadcasting System Scholarship.  Yolanda completed her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Northwestern University in December 2008 and was the first African American to do so.  Prior to that, she attained a M.A. in Computer Science at Kent State University in December 1994, and a B.S. in Mathematics at Tougaloo College in May 1992.  In her spare time, Yolanda teaches fitness classes.

Find out when Yolanda will be speaking!
Presenting: More Than Just a Game:  Critical In-Game Interactions That Facilitate Second Language Acquisition