Email
jrwhitehill@wpi.edu
Office
100 Institute RD
Personal Website
Education
BS Computer Science Stanford University Departmental honors 2001
MS Computer Science University of the Western Cape Cum Laude 2007
PhD Computer Science University of California, San Diego 2012

My research interests are in applied machine learning, computer vision, data science and their applications to education, affective computing, and human behavior recognition. My work is highly interdisciplinary and frequently intersects cognitive science, psychology, and education. Before joining WPI, I was a research scientist at the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning at Harvard University. In 2012, I co-founded Emotient, a San Diego-based startup company for automatic emotion and facial expression recognition. I also love teaching and have lectured, mentored, and tutored students in the USA, South Africa, Rwanda, and Germany.

Research Interests
Machine learning
Affective computing
Intelligent tutoring systems
Computer vision

Scholarly Work

Personalized facial attractiveness prediction J Whitehill, JR Movellan Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition, 2008. FG'08. 8th IEEE International ...

Generalized adaptive view-based appearance model: Integrated framework for monocular head pose estimation LP Morency, J Whitehill, J Movellan Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition, 2008. FG'08. 8th IEEE International ...

Building a more effective teaching robot using apprenticeship learning P Ruvolo, J Whitehill, M Virnes, J Movellan 2008 7th IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning, 209-214

Measuring the perceived difficulty of a lecture using automatic facial expression recognition J Whitehill, M Bartlett, J Movellan International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 668-670

Developing a practical smile detector J Whitehill, G Littlewort, I Fasel, M Bartlett, J Movellan Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition 2, 7

Automatic real-time facial expression recognition for signed language translation JR Whitehill Department of Computer Science, University of the Western Cape

News

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Media Coverage

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Telegram.com
College Town: Nichols gets $2M anonymous gift

In its College Town section, The Telegram & Gazette featured how Jacob Whitehill, assistant professor of computer science, is collaborating with colleagues at the University of Colorado Boulder to explore how artificially intelligent (AI) teaching agents might help encourage more meaningful collaboration among students in school classrooms.

Forbes
Too Hot, Too Cold? Scientists Search For The Optimal Temperature For Learning

Forbes reported online about research led by Shichao Liu to study the optimal indoor conditions for learning. Liu, Jacob Whitehill and Steven Van Dessel received $299,991 develop technologies that detect and boost student engagement in lessons by controlling classroom temperature, ventilation, and lighting.