Technology Autism

People express affective-cognitive mental states, such as their level of interest and concentration, all the time, even when interacting with machines. These mental states shape the decisions that we make, govern how we communicate with others, and affect our performance. This talk will present the world's first affect-inference wearable, and its application in measuring and augmenting social-emotional communication of machines and people, including individuals with autism.

About the Speaker: Rana el Kaliouby is a postdoctoral associate at MIT's Media Laboratory, working on socially-smart wearables. Her doctoral dissertation has been nominated to the British Computer Society Distinguished Dissertation Award and has been featured in the NewScientist, New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNET, Wired, and Slashdot. She has taught at the American University in Cairo, and is currently co-teaching the first Autism Theory and Technology course at MIT. She is the 2006 recipient of the Global Women and Inventors Network, Higher Education & Learning Institutes (Gold Award). El Kaliouby holds a bachelor and masters degree in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. from the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.