CS Special Seminar: Tuukka Ruotsalo "Augmenting human cognition with computing"

Augmenting human cognition with computing

Tuukka Ruotsalo
University of Copenhagen & University of Helsinki

Abstract: The ability to model human cognition, infer human preferences and goals, and retrieve, generate, and create information matching the cognitive states of humans is one of the most ambitious goals of human-centered computing. What if we could naturally react to information that we encounter and computing systems could assist us in exploring, creating, and even imagining novel information based on our behavior, thoughts, and cognitive and emotional states? In this talk, I will present a line of research in which human behavior and natural reactions recorded from human physiology in response to the perception of data are used to guide machine-learning models. I will start with conventional behavioral signals and continue with novel approaches utilizing physiological and brain signals as sources of cognitive information. I will demonstrate modeling human preferences and intentions, decoding cognitive states for various applications in information exploration and recommender systems, and interactive generative modeling. Finally, I will discuss future research challenges and applications.

Bio: Tuukka Ruotsalo is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and holds an Academy of Finland Research Fellowship at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Tuukka leads the cognitive computing group focusing on augmenting human cognition via machine learning. His research develops computational methods and tools that model human cognition and applies them in information retrieval and exploration, generative models and computational imagination, and man-machine interaction. His research is published in the most prestigious forums in information retrieval and exploration, such as SIGIR, WWW, TOIS, JASIST; human-computer interaction, such as CHI, UIST, and TOCHI; as well as general science outlets, such as Scientific Reports and the Communications of the ACM. Tuukka has held academic posts at UC Berkeley and Harvard University earlier in his career. He is a recipient of several awards, including the World Summit Award of the United Nations.