ICCKE 2013 Keynote Speakers

Prof. Bruce Spencer

Senior research scientist at the University of New Brunswick

Fredericton New Brunswick Canada

Title: Shallow and Deep Semantics: Semantic Search Engines and Beyond

Abstract: In ongoing efforts to adapt search engines to users needs and expectations, understanding the semantics of crawled web documents and users questions is key to providing accurate answers. Complying with this demand, semantic search has been added recently to commercial internet search engines with only benefits for most users. We explore the current and future possibilities of adding more semantics to real-world applications, and consider the benefits and challenges.

Biography: Bruce Spencer is a Senior Research Scientist with the Faculty of Computer

Science at the University of New Brunswick. He is formerly a full Professor at UNB, a Senior Research Officer with the National Research Council of Canada where he founded the Internet Logic group, and the Research and Architecture Team Leader at the startup company Introhive. The subjects of Bruce's 70 publications include Automated Reasoning, the Semantic Web, Data Mining, and Social Network Analysis. His team won the international ORE ontology classification live competition in 2013. He has a Masters and PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Waterloo.

Time: October 31, 2013 / 9 – 10 AM

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Prof. Abdolhossein Sarrafzadeh

Professor and Head, Department of Computing and Information Technology

Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand

Title: Intelligent and Affective Tutoring Systems - emerging trends and future possibilities

Abstract: Many software systems would significantly improve performance if they could adapt to the emotional state of the user, for example if e-learning systems, Automatic Teller Machines, ticketing machines and robotic systems could recognise when users were happy, confused, frustrated or angry they could interact and guide the user accordingly and improve the service. We believe that e-learning systems and especially intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) would be significantly enhanced if these systems could adapt to the emotions of learners. This idea has led to the development of Affective Tutoring Systems (ATSs): ATSs are ITSs that are able to adapt to the affective state of learners.

This keynote address presents research leading to the development of an Affective Tutoring System which is the first of its kind and holds great promise for e-learning systems. The system utilises a computer systems, using a camera to detect learner's emotion through facial expressions and gestures and other significant bio-signals. The system is able to adapt to students and displays emotion via a lifelike agent called Eve. Eve’s tutoring adaptations are guided by a case-based reasoning method for adapting to student states; this method uses data that was generated by an observational study of human tutors. This talk presents the observational study, the case-based method, the ATS itself and the implementation of its emotion detection technology on a computer system for real-time performance, and finally the implications of the findings for Human Computer Interaction in general and e-learning in particular. Other applications of the technology especially in health developed in this research are discussed and future directions are presented.

Biography: Dr. Hossein Sarrafzadeh has a PhD in Computing, followed by over 17 years of academic and industrial experience. He is currently Professor and Head of Department of Computing at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland New Zealand. Dr Sarrafzadeh is internationally known for his work in the areas of intelligent systems, adaptive user interfaces, and machine translation. In recent years, Dr. Sarrafzadeh has developed one of the world’s first facial expression and gesture recognition systems which 9 facial expressions and 41 gestures in real-time. Dr. Sarrafzadeh also developed a novel vision based targeted advertising system which has been patented in New Zealand and overseas. Dr. Sarrafzadeh’s pioneering research work has had significant impact and has gained publicity with a number of radio and major Newspaper interviews including interviews with CBS Evening News, TV3, World TV, National Radio, NewzTalkZB and others as well as numerous international media articles including the Le Monde in France, the Dominion Post and the Herald. He has supervised and examined a number of Masters and Doctoral theses internationally. He has served on the editorial board of journals and program and organizing committees of numerous international conferences. He is a popular invited speaker. His research has attracted research funding, produced over 140 publications in prestigious journals such as ACM and IEEE Transactions and over 40 Masters and PhD completions.

Time: November 1, 2013 / 9 – 10 AM