SocialXLab News

We celebrated the end of semester with authentic Korean food, joined by former and current collaborators.

Dr. Wohn presented a paper on why viewers give emotional and financial support to live streamers at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). This took place April 21-26 in Montreal.

Juan shared the research that he did with Victor Chue (who graduated last semester) at the Dana Knox Student Research Showcase.

This weekend, three lab members presented their research at the three-day Scientista Symposium at the Microsoft offices in New York City. Professor Wohn also spoke as a panelist about Innovations in Technology.

Jie, Ankit, and Dhanush had their paper on live streaming shopping accepted at the ACM conference on Television and Interactive Video (TVX). Congratulations! Live streaming shopping is a very new phenomenon and the research provides insights into why people like it. Jie will be going to Korea in June to present the paper.

Priya Rajbabu is featured in NJIT news for being a 2018 NJ Governor Stem Scholar: http://news.njit.edu/5-njit-students-selected-2018-governors-stem-scholars/

Some excerpts:

What does being a Governor’s STEM Scholar mean to you? I am really proud to be a Governor’s STEM Scholar. Being accepted into the program provides students like me an opportunity to not only work on a research project respective to our field of study, but to also teach and share our knowledge with the high school students in the program. It is also really inspiring to be surrounded by so much talent at the research conferences.

What are you involved in as a Governor’s STEM Scholar? I lead a team of five other members in a research project I proposed. We are utilizing a dataset from a survey on drug consumption conducted by the State of New York. The goal is to focus on the youth population and identify correlations in the dataset to help us understand trends or patterns in their drug consumption habits.

How do you think this experience is benefiting you professionally? Being a Governor’s STEM Scholar is a recognition that allows me to stand out in a group of people. Recruiters are often intrigued by the program and ask me more about it, which provides me an opportunity to talk about the research project I work on with my group. In addition, I plan on attending graduate school to pursue a master’s degree in computer science, so this experience will help me stand out during the application process.

Lab members Anchita, Temi, and Mashael had their posters accepted at the Scientista Symposium and will be presenting their research there next month.

Anchita will be presenting “Food and mood journaling: Effect on an individual and impact of social sharing of data”

Mashael and Anchita will be co-presenting “Do Uber drivers feel safe?: A qualitative study to address the safety needs of Uber drivers through technology.”

Temi will be presenting “NJIT Buddy (A virtual social support app for college students). “

Juan Rios and Yanira Morales, with Dr. Wohn as faculty lead, received an NSF iCorps site grant to conduct formative interviews with stakeholders affected by the nationwide opioid crisis. They will be utilizing the interviews to design a social support application to help caregivers and those who are recovering.

We had lunch at Newark’s Dinosaur BBQ to welcome new members of the lab and say goodbye to those who graduated last semester. Please check out our PEOPLE page to see all of our new research assistants!

Juan Rios attended the ACM GROUP conference over winter break to present research done with Victor Chue and Dr. Wohn about how people feel when they touch something hot or cold while interacting with a conversational agent.