HCI Group at UC Merced Presents

Vera Liao's Headshot

Dr. Vera Liao

Research Staff

IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

Friday, June 29, 2018 at 1:00 PM in SE2-220

Towards Adaptive Conversational Agents

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing excitement around conversational agents or "chatbots", as many are compelled by the idea of providing a most natural form of interaction enabled by advances in artificial intelligence technologies. These systems are also embraced as dynamic natural language interfaces that can channel through complex navigational paths by adapting to individual users. However, designing adaptive systems often requires extensive studies of user behaviors, user needs inquiry and user modeling. In this talk, I will give an overview of our recent work towards adaptive conversational agents that centers around the three key questions for adaptive interfaces: 1) what to adapt for; 2) how to adapt; 3) for whom to adapt.

Short Bio

Vera Liao is a research staff member working at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Her research interest is on human-computer interaction and intelligent user interface. Two main areas of her research are information seeking behaviors and adaptive user interface. Upon joining IBM, she has been working on human interaction with AI systems, in particular conversational agents (e.g., chatbot, virtual agent). Recent topics she worked on include conversational search, adaptive conversational interface and agents supporting group tasks. She publishes at top-tier venues such as ACM CHI, ACM IUI, ACM CSCW, TOCHI, and AMIA. She received Best Paper Honorable Mention at CHI 2014 for her work on designing deliberation platforms that "nudge" people to hear diverse opinions. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science (focus on HCI) and M.S. in Human Factors from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University.