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I had a great time at the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) 2017 Conference celebrated in Kansas City, MO (November 1st-5th, 2017).Once again,  I was honored to be an NSF ASSIST Travel grant recipient (#EEC-1548197) and participate in the NSF Leverage/ASSIST   Faculty Development Institute. This was a great experience in which I was able to network with faculties from all around the US. The Institute had some stimulating workshops regarding NSF CAREER awards and other grants opportunities.

Furthermore, I was honored to be the keynote speaker for the Biomedical and Bioengineering Engineering Science Symposium Oral Presentation session. There I presented some of the work being conducted by the NSF Center for Health Organizational Transformation (CHOT) at PSU. Moreover, our presentation, titled “Machine learning Applications: Towards personalized medicine and biomechanical modeling” (see presentation), introduced students to the current applications of Machine Learning in the Biomedical and Bioengineering fields. I also served as a judge for this section, so congratulations to Wendy Alvarez on winning the first place in the oral presentation competition (see her picture receiving the prize from the hands of Dr. Gaedicke, Engineering Science Symposium chair, below). She presented her research in the Biomedical and Bioengineering section, so I was able to see at first hand her exceptional work. I also assisted as a judge for the poster competition, so congratulation to Mariana Flores, winner of the poster session.

We also were part of the Graduate Fair, assisting Dr. Gersie from the Applied Research Laboratory, the Center for Engineering Outreach and Inclusion, and the Multicultural Engineering Graduate Association from Penn State in the search and recruitment of minorities and underrepresented students that are planning to pursue a graduate career or job in the STEM fields. During the fair, I had the privilege to meet, talk with, and advise several great students who are already doing some interesting research work.

Here are a few pictures of the conference. Again the Air Force Research Laboratory always showcases some interactive and engaging technologies.

This was my first time attending the HENAAC- Great Minds in STEM Conference, celebrated in Pasadena California (October 18-22, 2017). I was honored to be a NSF ASSIST Travel grant recipient (#EEC-1548322) and participate in the NSF Leverage/ASSIST  Early-Career Faculty Development Symposium. This was a great experience in which I was able to network with other peers, early faculties, and key members of several funding agencies and universities. Additionally, the workshops of the Symposium were tailored to early and prospective faculties, covering topics from building and managing efficient research teams, to ensuring and requesting funding from a wide range of agencies and organizations.

Moreover, in this conference, we were able to present our work “Towards Personalized Performance Feedback by Mining the Dynamics of Facial Keypoint Data” which aims to tackle one of the grand engineering challenges of the 21st century: the Development of Personalized Learning.  We were honored to receive the 2nd place in the Research Poster Graduate competition in the Engineering/Technology category. This award highlights that the community recognizes our hard work and the importance of our research.

Also, I was able to help Penn State in the recruitment of minorities and underrepresented students that are planning to pursue a graduate career in the STEM fields. This is a constant pursuit of Penn State, especially the Center for Engineering Outreach and Inclusion. During the career-fair, I had the privilege to meet, talk with, and advise several great students who were interested in advancing their engineering careers.

Here are a few pictures of the conference and a few of the great technologies present at the conference.

(PS: The first night we had a Dinner reception at Caltech, with several great speakers. Even though we did not meet Sheldon or Leonard, I did find the “The Big Bang Theory ” way, see picture below)

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Mid-Atlantic Section Fall 2017 Conference, which took place at Penn State Berks from October 6-7, was a great opportunity to learn the research work of other peers in the field of Eng. education. In this conference, I had the chance to present a novel method that integrates intelligent system technology, computer vision, and machine learning to provide real-time ergonomic feedback and educational content to students. Our paper titled  “Towards Real-time Ergonomics Feedback and Educational Content with the use of Co-Robots“ (see PDF) presents our method and an overview of recent advancements in technology that make this proposed method feasible.

In our presentation, we had several videos that illustrated the state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms and machine learning applications in Eng. education. Here are just a couple of pictures of our presentation (see presentation).

I was honored to be a Tapia NSF Scholar (#CNS-1733570) and be part of the 2017 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference( Sept. -20-23, Atlanta, GA). For 16 years, this conference has been the premier venue to acknowledge, to promote and to celebrate diversity in computing. This year I was selected for the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), in which I presented the work done in collaboration with Dr Conrad S. Tucker titled: “Towards Personalized Performance Feedback by Mining the Dynamics of Facial Keypoint Data”. Moreover, I was selected to present in the second round of the Student Research Competition and was one of the finalists in this year’s conference.

The ACM Tapia Conference was a great opportunity to present our research, as well as to network with other peers in the field, and participate in great workshops regarding Innovation and Big Data, like the ones given by MIT Lincoln Laboratories and Microsoft. However, one of the most memorable moments of the conference was the keynote speaker at the conference banquet Dr Randal Pinkett, and his message of “Success is a standard, but greatness is the goal.”

Here are just a few pictures of the conference, the Student Research Competition, and the keynote speaker.

Once again I was invited to be part of the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department  Faculty Fair. This was my second time representing the D.A.T.A. Lab and the research work Dr. Tucker and the graduate’s student of the lab are exploring. This was a great opportunity to let other Faculty members and students (both graduate and undergraduate) the state-of-the-art research the D.A.T.A. Lab is conducting. Here some pictures of the 2016 & 2017 event.

We are getting ready for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Mid-Atlantic Section Fall 2017 Conference, taking place at Penn State Berks (Gaige Technology and Business Innovation Building), PA from October 6-7, 2017. We will be presenting our work titled: “Towards Real-time Ergonomics Feedback and Educational Content with the use of Co-Robots“, done in collaboration with Dr. Conrad Tucker.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC) & Computers & Information in Engineering (CIE) Conference was an extraordinary experience. I had the chance to get together with other researchers of the community and discussed the future of engineering research. The conference was a great opportunity to learn about the state-of-the-art research in the field of Engineering Education, Emotional Engineering, and Data-Driven Design.

I presented the work done in collaboration with Dr. Conrad Tucker, titled: “From Mining Affective State to Mining Facial Keypoint data: The Quest Towards Personalized Feedback“, in the 37th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (CIE) Emotional Engineering II session

Moreover, I presented the work done in collaboration with Dr. Scarlet Miller, and Xuan Zheng, titled: “Linking Creativity Measurements to Product Market Favorability: A Data-Mining Approach”, in the 43rd Design Automation Conference (DAC) Data-Driven Design session.

Here are just a couple of pictures from the event. Once again, there was a lot of interesting sessions to attend and not too much for pictures.

The 124th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition, that took place in Columbus, OH ( June 23-28, 2017),  was a great experience to network, learn, and spread our research. The conference was a great opportunity to learn about the state-of-the-art research in the field of Engineering Education, how Virtual Reality, Robotics, and Drones are pushing the boundaries of this field.

I presented a demo related to our work titled: “When to Provide Feedback? Exploring Human-CoRobot Interactions in Engineering Environments“ (see PDF), done in collaboration with Dr. Conrad Tucker

Here are just a couple of pictures from the event and our real-time demo of facial recognition that call the attention of a lot of peers. Looking forward to next year.

The research community is showing increase interest in our work on  Gamification and personalized systems.  Our research which was published in the  Journal of Computer in Human Behavior on January 2017  (see doc. here),  was the center of a news article published  ISE Magazine (June 2017; Vol:49, No.:6, pag.15).

We are currently working on a new study that aims to use facial expression recognition and machine learning algorithms to advance personalized gamification applications.

We had a great time, during the first IndustryXchange sponsored by the College of Engineering at the Pennsylvaniaia State University. We had an opportunity to present our current research work on personalized learning systems and gain valuable insight on how affective-sensitive system and facial recognition technology can be implemented to solve a wide range of current industry problems.

Here are some pictures of the event.