Seminar Series
Human-Machine Interaction for Behavioral Health Care
Zhi Zheng, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology
Monday, November 27, 2023
Gateway 1002
12:00pm – 12:50pm
Abstract: Behavioral health refers to mental health and substance use disorders, life stressors and crises, and stress-related physical symptoms. Behavioral health care targets the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of those conditions. Compared to physical health care, where technology has been used everywhere, behavioral health care has not benefited much from technology. Device and instrumentation exploration is still in its infancy. Interactive technologies, such as robots and virtual reality, can be used to effectively quantify and elicit desired human behaviors, and thus provide great opportunities to improve current behavioral healthcare practices with objective measurements and convenient tools. In this talk, I will first present my research on human-machine interaction-based assessment and intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). How to design, develop, and validate intelligent systems targeting core behavioral difficulties will be discussed, focusing on human behavior pattern recognition and interaction dynamics management. The engineering cores and computational methodologies are generalizable across different disorders/health concerns. I will introduce how the generalization can be used to guide the development of novel solutions to address other healthcare needs, such as promoting beneficial exercises for older adults and interpreting the impact of alcohol consumption on the interaction within intimate couples. Finally, the challenges and opportunities in designing intelligent systems for behavioral health care will be discussed together with important future directions.
Biography: Zhi Zheng is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and her M.S. in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems from Xidian University. Then she received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. Currently, Dr. Zheng leads the Intelligent Interaction Research (I2R) Lab at RIT. Her research interests cover topics in human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction, machine learning, developmental disorders, aging, and substance use. She has over 10 years of experience in the design, development, and validation of human-machine interaction systems for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessment and intervention. She has also been working on promoting mind-body exercise for the aging population and investigating the behavioral impact of alcohol consumption on intimate couples. She has led hundreds of human subject experiment sessions to validate the efficacy of interactive technologies. These works have generated more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in top journals and conferences. Her research was selected by the 20th annual Coalition for National Science Funding Capitol Hill Exhibition & Reception and was reported by multiple media, such as e.g., NSF Science 360, ABC News, Spectrum News, WSMV-TV, and WROC-TV.
For a zoom link please contact June Norton at jnorton@wpi.edu or Kate Harrison at kharrison@wpi.edu