Advancing human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion

The Affective Computing group works at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Health, and Human Flourishing, with the goal of improving human lives.

Today, the group of people who are not flourishing or at risk of not flourishing is growing because of some types of AI that have been widely deployed without regard for human wellbeing. We are working to bring our expertise to educate about and support human health and flourishing in this rapidly-changing world.

Most of our research efforts aim to help vulnerable groups.  Current research projects involve  people who experience depression and anxiety disorders, youth in the child welfare system, neurodivergent people, and infants. We learn a lot from them and collaborate together with their communities of family, physicians, and supporters, to co-develop solutions to improve their experiences and outcomes.

Our team brings years of experience studying what contributes to human health and wellbeing alongside deep technical expertise in AI, machine learning, and statistical data analysis for extracting evidence-based insights from complex dynamic human behavioral and physiological data.  We pioneered many methods involving affective and wearable data from real-world contexts.  We love to tackle the hardest kinds of problems, and we publish and present frequently on what we discover.