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Fostering the Landscape of “Critical Computing” at Georgia Tech (Wong)
No full textPresented on April 3, 2025 in the TSRB 1st floor ballroom at 12:30 p.m.The Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech (IPaT), the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems co-sponsored $54,000 in seed grant awards to four research projects. The goal of the grants for 2024-25 is to promote research activities involving faculty and students from the many disciplines represented in IPaT. Engagement grants are also designed to foster new collaborations internal or external to Georgia Tech.Team Members: Yanni Loukissas, associate professor, School of Literature, Media and Communication; Emily Weigel, senior academic professional, School of Biological Sciences; Alison Valk, Jason Wright, and Charlie Bennett with the Georgia Tech Library; Steve Place, Jermaine Clonts, and Svetlana Sorok with the Georgia Tech Office of Sustainability.Team members: HyunJoo Oh, assistant professor, School of Industrial Design and School of Interactive Computing; Sehoon Ha, assistant professor, School of Interactive Computing; Sabrina Grossman, program director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Georgia Tech.Team members: Moeiini Reilly, research technologist, GTRI, and human-centered computing Ph.D. student with the School of Interactive Computing; Paul Brancato, research engineer, GTRI; Nicole Brancato, composer and music educator.Team Members: Richmond Wong, assistant professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication; Heidi Biggs, assistant professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication; Carl DiSalvo, professor, School of Interactive Computing; Betsy DiSalvo, professor, School of Interactive Computing.Runtime: 57:16 minutesLoukissas Team: Our research idea is to study the social effects of fostering creative, public experiences with real-time, sustainability-related data on campus with the long-term goal of learning what a resource-conscious campus community might look like. Our approach will be to develop an interactive data visualization prototype for the Georgia Tech Library Media Bridge that will visualize real-time water use data in 47 student housing buildings. This visualization will serve as an adaptable research instrument through which to explore the potential for public experiences with data. It will challenge student residents to reflect on and take practical steps to change the environmental footprint of the places where they live. This research project is co-funded with Georgia Tech's Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.Oh Team: The rise of design and fabrication tools like 3D printers and microcontrollers has expanded maker education from K-12 to higher education. However, access remains a challenge, especially for underprivileged youth. Teachers often struggle to lead maker-centered activities due to a lack of design and engineering expertise, which particularly affects students in low-resource districts where school activities may be their only exposure to creative learning. To address this, we propose developing a web-based AI system that empowers teachers to lead kinetic design and engineering projects. Through participatory design with experienced teachers, the system will assist with project design and offer customized instructional guidance by identifying challenging steps and potential recovery solutions and adapting content to meet teachers’ needs.Reilly Team: Artistic computing learning environments play a crucial role in promoting equity and inclusion in computing by offering diverse opportunities to learn computational thinking through culturally relevant programming. Despite advances in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) education, there remains a significant gap in understanding how learners interact with and design creatively in these constructionist settings, as well as how the materiality of computational artifacts influences learning processes, meaning-making, and creative agency. This research seeks to build a framework for centering social and cultural dimensions of artistic learning within computational environments augmented by low-cost, technology-enhanced music education.Wong Team: Critical computing interrogates the social values, normative orientations, and unintended consequences of computing applications, and it is quickly coming to occupy a central place in research and practice among Georgia Tech researchers and their larger research communities. We seek to build a transdisciplinary critical computing research community at Georgia Tech spanning computing, the social sciences, humanities, and related disciplines. Through a working group and symposium series, we will explore the methods, concepts, theories, history, funding, and evaluation of critical computing research. We will investigate approaches to critical computing research that foreground issues of social values and ethics, engage in just and equitable research approaches, explore new forms of communication and expression, and seek to pursue meaningful alternatives to the status quo
Joint Loading in Industrial Lifts: Informing Mitigation Strategies through Joint-level Biomechanics
No full textManual labor professions require workers to perform tasks which comprise their musculoskeletal integrity and expose them to heightened risks of injury from overexertion. in professions It is known that repetitive load carriage, especially during asymmetric walking, lifting, and twisting among other locomotion modes can lead to the development of tissue and joint injuries from overexertion. While it is well-documented that joint kinematics, joint kinetics, and muscle activity can be indicators of injury predisposition, we believe that internal joint loading, joint contact forces (JCFs), may provide an alternative, under-the-skin, perspective on potential biomechanical biomarkers indicative of informing about the risks of joint injuries. There is a critical gap in understanding the internal joint loading experienced by the joint capsule from nearby tissues (i.e. muscles, ligaments, etc.) and external factors during manual labor tasks, as well as how injury mitigation solutions such as wearable technology influence JCFs and predisposition to injury.
This dissertation explores the relationship between joint-level and muscle-level mechanics and effort and how these influences resolve into the internal joint state of JCFs across a myriad of manual labor-inspired movements and tasks. The overarching objectives were to investigate whether assistive and informative intervention strategies can help alleviate high, and potentially hazardous JCFs. In Chapter 2, we develop a framework that maps JCFs to industry-relevant lifting tasks. With the use of computational neuromusculoskeletal solvers to optimize estimates of muscle forces and JCFs, we identified a subset of work-specific movements that expose manual laborers to higher risks of injury at their lower back and knee joints. Following this work, in Chapter 3 we investigated how the use of exoskeletons affects JCFs in the subset of injurious manual lifting tasks identified in Chapter 2. More specifically, we sought to uncover how motorized assistance from a knee exoskeleton and passive assistance from a soft, back exoskeleton influence internal lower back and knee joint loads. In Chapter 4, we leverage analyses performed in Chapters 2 and 3 to measure how wearable sensor outputs from muscles, segments, and ground reaction forces can inform users of internal joint forces during various movements as a final mitigation strategy. Using a deep learning model equipped to self-identify relevant features which map to estimates of JCFs, key findings demonstrated that muscle activations were imperative to reliable normal JCF estimation. The wearable sensors utilized in this work were not adequate inputs for shear JCF estimation; however, we did fin d that IMUs were a primary contributor to the better performing shear JCF estimates. All in all, this dissertation provides an informative lens on JCFs, a contributing factor to joint injuries, and potential effects of wearable technology on internal joint loading.Ph.D.Bioengineerin
PopSign ASL V2.0: A Large Isolated Sign Language Dataset
No full textPopSignAI is a bubble shooter-based mobile game to help hearing parents of deaf infants learn American Sign Language. Building on previous works, PopSignAI utilizes sign language recognition to provide real-time feedback on the player’s signing. PopSignAI focuses on a vocabulary drawn from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), which are the first concepts that an english-speaking child would learn in America. PopSign V1.0 covers 250 out of the 563 concepts listed in the MacArthur-Bates CDI. Thus to address this gap, PopSign V2.0 covers the remaining 313 concepts not covered in PopSign V1.0. PopSign V2 introduces approximately 170,000 new videos, collecting data from 49 different native ASL signers, with each participant approximately providing 10 videos for each of the 313 new concepts.UndergraduateComputer Scienc
Can Synchronized Activities Promote Positive Sentiments of the Young Toward the Old?
No full textStudies have shown that the younger generation’s general view of older adults is often negative, which lay consequences such as tension between intergenerational relationships and social disharmony. Current study centers on interpersonal synchrony as a potential intervening venue. Prior researches show that synchronous activities enhance positivity among interpersonal interactions, yet, those studies were limited to subjects within the same generation. It remains uncertain whether past findings can be generalized to people in opposite age groups. Thus, this study adopted a pre and post-test experimental design to test whether synchronous activities, specifically synchronous walking, promote positive sentiments of younger adults toward older adults. Potential changes in components essential for forming positive interpersonal relationships, such as impression, perceived self-other closeness, connectedness, prosocial attitudes and behavior, and conversation engagement, were examined using standard questionnaires to assess younger adults’ sentiments toward older adults throughout experiments. Participants (N = 51; 64.7% female) first completed a battery of questionnaires online assessing background information. After a few days, they were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (i.e., synchronous walking, asynchronous walking, and no walking) and engaged in tasks with an older confederate. A series of one-way repeated measures ANOVA, one-way ANOVA, and chi-square test of independence were conducted for hypothesis testing. Results revealed that synchronous walking significantly enhanced positive impressions, perceived self-other closeness, connectedness, and prosocial attitudes and behavior toward the older confederate and older adults in general. This study sheds light on applications of synchronous activities for promoting positive intergenerational interactions and extend the research scope of interpersonal synchrony to intergenerational relationships.M.S.Psycholog
A Comparison of Younger and Older Adults' Spatial Navigation Strategies in Virtual Reality
No full textMany studies agree that younger and older adults differ in their spatial navigation strategies and performance. Particularly, older adults tend to favor egocentric strategies over allocentric ones, possibly due to an overreliance on frontostriatal networks as the hippocampus declines with age. Stress also plays a role in navigation; particularly, under time pressure and when challenged with a novel task, we tend to stick to familiar routes instead of taking shortcuts in order to reach our end goal. Yet, very little research has examined the intersection between these aging and stress effects. This is important because evidence also shows that the stress response changes with age. The present study aims to further study age-related spatial navigation differences through a variety of virtual reality tasks, such as the Y-maze and dual-solution tasks, that show navigational preferences and performance through their behavioral results. Consistent with prior studies, my findings suggest that older adults rely more heavily on egocentric strategies while younger adults rely more on allocentric ones, although there is greater variance in navigational strategies among younger adults. In comparison to older adults, younger adults also show greater flexibility when navigating to their goals, sometimes favoring a shortcut over following a learned route. Older adults, on average, show lower cortisol levels than younger adults during the spatial navigation tasks, possibly due to less stress in navigating a familiar route (their dominant strategy), rather than attempting to take a novel shortcut.UndergraduatePsycholog
Interdisciplinary Investigations into Sensory Neuron Mechanisms and Modulations in Health and Disease
No full textThe somatosensory system is a critical component to maintaining homeostasis and is often one of the first responders to changes in external and internal stimuli, quickly triggering the body to mitigate any threats. However, despite continuous and significant advancements in our understanding of the somatosensory system’s role in various facets of health and disease from skin disease to non-invasive technologies for sensory neuron manipulation, many of the complex mechanisms still remain widely unknown, which hinders novel and effective treatments that may reduce economic and health burdens. In this dissertation, I attempt to answer some of these critical questions that remain unanswered by (1) investigating toxins released by S. aureus, which may be implicated in atopic dermatitis (AD), (2) conducting a function analysis of Mas-related G protein-coupled receptor (Mrgpr) C11+ neurons within the vagal ganglia (VG) that innervate and contribute to the function of the airway, and (3) revealing ultrasound parameters that may be critical to FUS-induced neuromodulation. These findings reveal new avenues for research in a wide range of areas involving the somatosensory system, may provide novel tools for studying the role of the somatosensory system in facets of health and disease, and offer crucial insights for future therapeutic efforts.Ph.D.Biolog
Applications of New Materials Systems and Machine Learning Techniques for compensation and Calibration of MEMS
No full textThis PhD dissertation explores significant advancements in the thermal stability and calibration accuracy of MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) devices, particularly focusing on the application of high-performance 4H-SiC (silicon carbide) and AlN (aluminum nitride) in MEMS resonators and gyroscopes. Moreover, the research provides a high-level exploration of the critical advancements in MEMS technology, focusing on enhancing thermal stability and calibration accuracy through innovative material applications and cutting-edge ML and DL techniques. The work presented in this dissertation collectively contributes to the development of highly stable and accurate MEMS resonators and gyroscopes, paving the way for their broader application in various high-stakes and everyday environments. These innovations ensure the continued evolution and reliability of MEMS technology, highlighting its importance in modern technological applications.Ph.D.Electrical and Computer Engineerin
How do Practitioners Define and Design for Privacy When Developing Consumer AI Technologies?
No full textAs artificial intelligence (AI) is swiftly advancing many facets of technology, it is more pertinent than ever to consider how these systems are designed for end user privacy. Prior research reveals that there are areas for AI practitioners to improve privacy considerations when designing AI systems, but lack clarity in how these changes could be implemented. We looked to reveal exactly where the gap between research and practice is for AI practitioners and privacy. By conducting semi-structured interviews, we revealed that this gap often stems from a lack of a centralized privacy definition. While practitioners may have felt personally motivated to uphold privacy, the lack of privacy education and compliance-centered rigidity made it difficult to do so. Moving forward, we believe that informed, up-to-date policy could be a good path to ensure privacy is upheld in all AI products.UndergraduateComputer Scienc
Understanding Changes to the Surface of Silver Nanocubes during Their Polyol Synthesis, Processing, and Seeded Growth
No full textSilver nanocubes have been extensively studied owing to their remarkable plasmonic and catalytic properties. Despite the success in synthesis, a detailed understanding of the surface chemistry during and after the synthesis remains elusive. This dissertation leverages the high sensitivity of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to probe the native surface of Ag nanocubes. In the first part of my thesis, I investigated Ag nanocubes synthesized using an HCl-mediated polyol method. I provided direct evidence to support the presence of Cl- on the surface of Ag nanocubes while they were suspended in the original reaction solution by resolving the Ag–Cl vibrational peak. I also investigated the synthesis in the absence of Cl-, proving the crucial role of Cl- in directing shape evolution. Moreover, I demonstrated that solvents used during sample preparation critically influenced surface chemistry and morphology retention. Acetone facilitated reversible aggregation and co-adsorption of carbonyl groups and Cl-, which suppressed oxidative etching and improved recovery during collection. Subsequent washing with water or ethanol enables effective redispersion while facilitating the desorption of Cl- ions and the adsorption of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP). The second part of my thesis investigated surface changes during seed-mediated growth of Ag nanocubes in an aqueous system. SERS revealed ligand exchange between PVP and the Cl- from CTAC, and the deposition of AgCl on Ag seeds. Upon addition of ascorbic acid, electron transfer increased surface electron density, enhancing SERS signals and enabling direct reduction of AgCl into Ag. Collectively, my thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms governing the synthesis and preservation of Ag nanocubes, offering guidance for the rational synthesis of Ag nanocrystals.Ph.D.Chemistry and Biochemistr