Doctoral Consortium
The Doctoral Consortium is scheduled for Tuesday, 16 September, in Room C356 (Building C).
09:00 Welcome & Introductions
09:10 – Session 1 – Multimodal Interaction
A Cohesive Research Program on Multimodal Conversations with Embodied Agents in 2D and VR Platforms
Sagar Ashok Vankit – Mentor: Doron Friedman
Nonverbal Behavior Generation for Socially Interactive Agents
Oliver Chojnowski – Mentor: Matias Volonte
How Much Context is Too Much Context? Rethinking Contextual Boundaries for Engagement-Aware Turn-Taking in Embodied Conversational Agents
Daksitha Don – Mentor: Catherine Pelachaud
A Cognitive-Computational Model for Multimodal Creativity in Speech-Gesture Production
Lisa Gottshalk – Mentor: Brian Ravenet
10:30 Coffee Break (30 min)
11:00 – Session 2 – Adaptive and Contextual IVAs
Empowering Generative AI with Environmental Awareness for Virtual Instruction in Immersive Training
Nour Benzeid – Mentor: Evelien Heyslaar
Investigating the Effects and Potential of VR Interventions to Reduce Real-World Racial Biases using Intelligent Virtual Agents
Ohenewa Akuffo – Mentor: Jonathan Gratch
11:40 Panel Discussion – “A career in research”
moderated by Zerrin Yumak, Monique Dittrich and Aike Hortsmann
12:30 Lunch
13:30 – Session 3 – Social aspects of IVAs
Context-Aware Virtual Agents: Modeling Emotion and Behavior with Large Language Models
Bin Han – Mentor: Elisabeth André
Cognitive Framework for Believable Social Virtual Agents
Chen Yang – Mentor: Patrick Gebhard
Towards Emotionally Authentic Virtual Actors: Investigating Stanislavski’s Method through EEG-based Emotional Modeling
Natali Chavez – Mentor: Ralf Schmaelzle
Social Roles of Digital GenAI Assistants
Leonard Block Santos – Mentor: Dirk Heylen
14:50 Open Science Discussion: Tanja Schneeberger & Nina Knieriemen (40min)
15:30 Coffee Break (30 min)
16:00 Session 4 – Social Impact and Health
Understanding the Therapeutic Alliance with an Embodied Conversational Agent for Mental Health
Charlotte Menard – Mentor: Willem Paul Brinkman
Status-aware Conversation Behaviour Generation for Virtual Agents
Zimu Cheng – Mentor: Florian Pécune