Lab Director

Jessie Chin
Assistant Professor, School of Information Sciences (iSchool)

I am a translational cognitive scientist with multidisciplinary research training in cognitive science, human factors, human-computer interaction and health informatics. These experiences enrich my research spectrum to approach research questions systematically by conducting (a) applied research: to understand the human behavior in the context (e.g., user study, cohort study); (b) use-inspired basic research: to model the fundamental mechanism of interactive human behavior in the complex environments (e.g., experimentation, predictive modeling); and (c) translational and intervention research: to develop both theory-grounded and pragmatic intervention and to validate its feasibility, acceptability, efficacy and effectiveness on human behavior and health (e.g., randomized controlled trial study).

The overarching goals of our research programs are (a) to advance our understandings about how human minds across the lifespan adapt to the complex information environments through information search and uptake; (b) to translate the findings in (a) to design information technologies that support complex cognitive activities (such as learning and decision-making); and (c) to apply the findings in (b) to develop sociotechnical solutions for health promotion and addressing health disparities.

Email: chin5@illinois.edu
ResearchGate:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jessie_Chin
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DvYvHnUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Current Students

Graduate Students

Smit A. Desai
PhD Student in Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Current Projects:

• Designing instructional conversational agents for older adults
• Designing persuasive conversational agents for health behavior nudging
• Examine the dynamics between enrichment seeking and cognitive/socioemotional well-being among the adults in their midlife and older ages

Tre Tomaszewski

PhD Student in Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Current Projects:

• AI-assisted agents in informal/self-regulated learning
• Combing learning theories and machine-learning to design interactive learning interfaces
• Identifying False HPV-Vaccine Information and Modeling Its Impact on Risk Perceptions

Lixcy Vega

PhD Student in Informatics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Current Projects:

• Exploring the Design of Sociotechnical Solutions for the People with Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms

Chaewon Bak

PhD Student in Information Sciences

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Research interests:

Health misinformation, digital mental health, precision medicine

Current Projects:

• Identifying False HPV-Vaccine Information and Modeling Its Impact on Risk Perceptions
• Bridging digital phenotype and behavioral promotion models to address evolving needs across the cancer continuum
• Developing a motivational-interview agent to promote COVID-19 vaccine uptake

Caywin Zhuang

MD Student in Carle Illinois College of Medicine

Current Projects:

• Promoting Physical Activity with Conversational Agents for Sedentary Older Adults

• AI-assisted agents in medical decision-making

• Foraging for learning new knowledge in the wild: Acquiring/updating knowledge from multiple information of mixed qualities

Undergraduate Students

Mia X. Smith

• Developing a motivational-interview agent to promote COVID-19 vaccine uptake
• Promoting Physical Activity with Conversational Agents for Sedentary Older Adults

• Identifying False HPV-Vaccine Information and Modeling Its Impact on Risk Perceptions

Alumni

Graduate Students

Shashi Roshan
MS Student in Statistics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Undergraduate Students

Sizhi Tan
BS Program in Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign