Featured Faculty

Using Linguistic and Multimodal Sensing (including Eye Gaze or Biophysical Signals), she focuses on studying how humans express or perceive complex reactions such as specific emotions, and the development of automated systems capable of recognizing or generating such behaviors or experiences. She wishes to contribute to the development of inclusive AI resources, techniques, and systems, and she is interested in the roles of humans in AI systems and their participation in machine learning.

Additionally, Cissi is intrigued by questions about multimodal dialogue interactions, and she is involved in developing interfaces that enable users to analyze and interpret linguistic or multimodal data and computational models intuitively. She is currently mapping out the research landscape that involves language resources for intelligent affective computing.

Cissi is passionate about mentoring RIT graduate and undergraduate students and about broadening participation and ensuring diverse perspectives in AI research. She is also PI for the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site: Computational Sensing for Human-centered AI at RIT. She has co-authored many peer-reviewed publications with students and colleagues, including journal articles and proceedings papers, and is a co-recipient of a best paper award. Cissi is diversity and inclusion co-chair for ACL 2020, this year’s conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics, and she contributed collaboratively to launching a workshop on Human-centered Computational Sensing at PerCom, the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications. In addition, she engages in a variety of interdisciplinary curricular initiatives on campus.

Cissi completed her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and she is now an Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and also affiliated with the Center for Human-aware AI, the PhD Program in Computing and Information Sciences, and the Department of Computer Science at RIT. She is currently on a sabbatical in the Department of Computer Science and Media Technology at Malmö University, Sweden.

Cecilia Alm
Associate Professor
RIT College of Liberal Arts