Faculty

Dr. Christine Lisetti
Director, Virtual Intelligent Social AGEnts (VISAGE) Laboratory
Associate Professor, Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences
email: lisetti(at)cs.fiu.edu
homepage URL: http://www.cis.fiu.edu/~lisetti
Christine Lisetti’s long-term research goal is to create digital and engaging socially interactive agents that can interact with humans, via expressive multi-modalities humans can naturally understand (e.g speech, facial expressions, body gestures), in order to help teachers, trainers, healthcare and medical providers, and regular people in a variety of contexts involving socio-emotional content.
She is interested on discovering design principles for the ethical conception of digital empathetic and supportive health coaches/assistants, which can “virtually extend” human health practitioners for people’s benefit.  She is also interested in advancing human-centered design for cyberlearning with serious educational games for learning social skills.

Current Graduate Students

 

Shamim Golafshan

Shamim Golafshan holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran, and an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Isfahan.  She is now pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Florida International University.  Her research interests include Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Virtual Reality, and Human Computer Interaction for the healthcare and medical domain.

 

Trinity Soccoro 

Trinity Soccoro  holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Information Technology from Florida International University, where she also worked as an I.T. support personnel.  She is a member of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society.  She is now pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Florida International University.  Her research interests include Affective Computing, and Human-Computer Interaction.

 

Jonathan Fields 

Jonathan Fields holds a Bachelor in Linguistics, minor in Computer Science from Florida International University, and is pursuing his Master in Computer Science at FIU.  He began his formal training studying Electronic Publishing at The Corcoran College of Art an Design in Washington, DC. He then worked as Front-End developer for The Washington Post, Discovery Channel and AARP.  He instructed the Universities of Miami’s Full Stack Software Development Bootcamp Program for two six-month cohorts.  He has rebuilt the existing empathetic Embodied Virtual Agent (eEVA) platform using ReactJS and reactive stream processing with custom React hooks to model multi-modal interactions and conversations with virtual agents.

VISAGE Alumni

Ph.D. students

Alban Delamarre, PhD in Computer Science, Florida International University, 2020.  Upon graduation, Dr. Delamarre joined the Dan Marino Foundation to continue working on the topic of his PhD dissertation topic – namely How to design, develop, and evaluate virtual reality training software to help people practice their  social skills, now in particular for people with autism spectrum disorder.

 

 

 

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Dr. Reza Amini, PhD in Computer Science, Florida International University, 2015.​  Upon graduation, Dr. Amini  became Senior Research Software Engineer at iPSoft Corporation to continue working on the application to industry of what he studied in his PhD dissertation topic – namely How to construct 3D models of non-verbal behavior to create expressive avatars?  

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Dr. Ugan Yasavur, PhD in Computer Science, Florida International University, 2014.  Upon graduation, Dr. Yasavur became a Senior Research Software Engineer at iPSoft Corporation to continue working on the application to industry of what he studied in his PhD dissertation topic – namely, How to build dialog management systems to enable flowing conversations with intelligent avatars?

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Dr. Olivier Villon, Doctorat d’État en Informatique, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, FRANCE, 2007.  Upon graduation, Dr. Villon decided to figure out which non-profit organization to work with.
Fatma Nasoz, PhD in Computer Science, 2004.  Upon graduation, Dr. Nasoz became Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics, University of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Master students

Stephanie Lunn, 2020.  Upon graduation joined our PhD. program.

 

 

 

 

Guido Ruiz, 2016.  Upon graduation became a software engineer with Miami-Dade Public School System.

 

 

 

 

  • Shakil Md Ahamed, 2014.
  • Tessa Verhoef, 2008.
  • Damien Birraux, 2007.
  • Eric Bahini, 2007.
  • Charles Lecoq, 2007.
  • Agnes Abastado, 2007.
  • Mikko Lethonen, 2006.
  • Marco Paleari, 2006.
  • Guillaume Bastard, 2005.
  • Andreas Marpaung,  2004, then joined UCF Computer Science PhD program.
  • Russ Tardif, 2003.

Undergraduate students

  • Geeticka Chauhan, 2015, then accepted in MIT PhD program.
  • Stephanie Lunn, 2014, funded by NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate Students grant; then joined our lab as Master student.
  • Daniel Rivero, 2015, funded by NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate Students grant.
  • Shadeh Ferris-Francis, 2014, then joined the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
  • Santiago Bolivar, 2013, funded by NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate Students grant, joined Dan Marino Foundation.
  • Guido Ruiz, 2013, then joined our lab as Master graduate student.
  • Jorge Travieso, funded by a grant from Numedeon-NSF, 2013, then joined iPSoft as software engineer.
  • Karen Fernandez Silva, McNair Program Fellow, 2012, accepted in the computer science graduate program on human-computer interaction at the University of Michigan.
  • Claudia de Leon, funded by grant from Vcom3D–NSF throughout 2011; then joined Ultimate Software where she is a Software Test Engineer.
  • Gabriel Lizarraga, funded by Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Distributed Mentoring Program; then accepted in FIU SCIS Ph.D program, 2008.
  • Karen Perez, funded by grant from Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Distributed Mentoring Program, 2008.
  • Sarah Brown, funded by grant from Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Distributed Mentoring Program, 2003; received Grace Hopper Scholarship; then accepted as CS Graduate Student, Simon Fraiser University, Canada.
  • Eric Baumer, Received UC Irvine Dean’s Scholarship; then accepted as Ph.D. student, University of California Irvine, 2002.