Researchers who develop social robots – ones that people interact with – focus too much on design features and not enough on sociological factors, like human-to-human interactions, the contexts where they happen and cultural norms involving robots, according to an award-winning paper from Cornell and Indiana University scholars who specialize in human-robot interaction.
Nicki Dell, associate professor, information and computer science, Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, co-founded (with Professor Tom Ristenpart) the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, a first-of-its-kind clinic to help survivors navigate technology abuse. The clinic was developed in partnership with the NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. Dell also helps to lead the Home Health Care Work Initiative in the ILR School Center on Applied Research on Work.
Beginning Fall 2024, Cornell undergraduates can minor in artificial intelligence (AI).
Offered by the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, the AI minor is intended for any undergraduates who anticipate AI playing a critical role in their academic and professional careers. Students will get a solid foundational understanding of the algorithms and techniques that underlie AI capabilities like machine learning, automated reasoning, natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics.
“The new minor presents another opportunity for all Big Red undergraduates to tap into Cornell’s leadership in AI and learn from world-class scholars who develop, critique, and refine AI systems for the greatest good,” said Claire Cardie, associate dean for education in Cornell Bowers CIS.
AI is poised to have a transformative impact on all disciplines and society more broadly, making education around AI essential, said Kavita Bala, dean of Cornell Bowers CIS and lead dean of the Cornell AI Initiative.
“Our students will graduate and live and work in an AI-enabled world. Education around AI is needed now more than ever, as AI becomes more powerful and ubiquitous in everyday life and as industries shift to hire talent to leverage it,” Bala said. “This minor serves students across campus, and across disciplines, who want to understand AI technology and apply it in other disciplines.”
To earn the AI minor, students must complete six courses: four required Foundations of AI core courses on machine learning, reasoning, human-AI interaction, and ethics, governance, and policy; and two electives. There are nearly 50 electives, including courses like Robot Learning (CS 4756), Text Mining History and Literature (INFO 3350), Statistical Computing (STSCI 4520), and dozens more.
Students with questions about the minor can contact ai-minor@cis.cornell.edu. Please note that while the AI minor was officially approved last May, it will become available to students starting Fall 2024.
By Louis DiPietro, a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
Cornell researchers have developed two technologies that track a person’s gaze and facial expressions through sonar-like sensing.
The technology is small enough to fit on commercial smartglasses or virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) headsets, yet consumes significantly less power than similar tools using cameras.
Cornell researchers have developed a wristband device that continuously detects hand positioning – as well as objects the hand interacts with – using AI-powered, inaudible soundwaves.
Potential applications include tracking hand positions for virtual reality (VR) systems, controlling smartphones and other devices with hand gestures, and understanding a user’s activities; for example, a cooking app could narrate a recipe as the user chops, measures and stirs. The technology is small enough to fit onto a commercial smartwatch and lasts all day on a standard smartwatch battery.
EchoWrist is among the newest low-power, body pose-tracking technology from the Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab. Cheng Zhang, assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science directs the lab.
“The hand is fundamentally important – whatever you do almost always involves hands,” Zhang said. “This device offers a solution that can continuously track your hand pose cheaply and also very accurately.”
Chi-Jung Lee and Ruidong Zhang, both doctoral students in the field of information science and co-first authors, will present the study, “EchoWrist: Continuous Hand Pose Tracking and Hand-Object Interaction Recognition Using Low-Power Active Acoustic Sensing On a Wristband,” at the Association of Computing Machinery CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’24), May 11-16.
EchoWrist also lets users control devices with gestures and give presentations. “We can enrich our interaction with a smartwatch or even other devices by allowing one-handed interaction – we could also remotely control our smartphone,” said Lee. “I can just use one-handed gestures to control my slides.”
This is the first time the lab has extended its tech beyond the body, said Ruidong Zhang. “EchoWrist not only tracks the hand itself, but also objects and the surrounding environment.”
The device uses two tiny speakers mounted on the top and underside of a wristband to bounce inaudible sound off the hand and any hand-held objects. Two nearby microphones pick up the echoes, which are interpreted by a microcontroller. A battery smaller than a quarter powers the device.
The team developed a type of artificial intelligence model inspired by neurons in the brain, called a neural network, to interpret a user’s hand posture based on the resulting echoes. To train the neural network, they compared echo profiles and videos of users making various gestures and reconstructed the positions of 20 hand joints based on the sound signals.
With help from 12 volunteers, the researchers tested how well EchoWrist detects objects such as a cup, chopsticks, water bottle, pot, pan and kettle, and actions like drinking, stirring, peeling, twisting, chopping and pouring. Overall, the device had 97.6% accuracy. This capability makes it possible for users to follow interactive recipes that track the cook’s progress and read out the next step – so cooks can avoid getting their screens dirty.
Unlike FingerTrak, a previous hand-tracking technology from the SciFi Lab that used cameras, EchoWrist is much smaller and consumes significantly less energy.
“An important added benefit of acoustic tracking is that it really enhances users’ privacy while providing a similar level of performance as camera tracking,” said co-author François Guimbretière, professor of information science in Cornell Bowers CIS and the multicollege Department of Design Tech.
The technology could be used to reproduce hand movements for VR applications. Existing VR and augmented reality systems accomplish this task using cameras mounted on the headset, but this approach uses a lot of power and can’t track the hands once they leave the headset’s limited field of view.
“One of the most exciting applications this technology would enable is to allow AI to understand human activities by tracking and interpreting the hand poses in everyday activities,” Cheng Zhang said.
Researchers noted however, that EchoWrist still struggled to distinguish between objects with highly similar shapes, such as a fork and a spoon. But the team is confident that the object recognition will improve as they refine the technology. With further optimization, they believe EchoWrist could easily be integrated into an existing off-the-shelf smartwatch.
Additional authors on the paper include Devansh Agarwal, an Ignite Fellow at Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing; Tianhong Catherine Yu, Ke Li and Mose Sakashita, all doctoral students in the field of information science; undergraduates Vipin Gunda ’25, Oliver Lopez ’24 and James Kim ’25; Sicheng Yin, an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh; and Boao Dong ’23, M.Eng. ’23.
Funding for the project is from the National Science Foundation.
Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
The Kessler Fellows program recently welcomed 20 students to its 2024 cohort. The students will spend their spring semesters sharpening their entrepreneurial skills while preparing for a fully funded summer internship at a startup of their choice.
Students from all walks of Cornell with an interest in entrepreneurship are encouraged to apply to the Kessler Fellows program, which only requires applicants be a junior in standing. The program provides the opportunity for students to build their entrepreneurial skills, experience and professional network throughout their summer internship.
Second place and $1,000 was awarded to information science doctoral student Sterling Williams-Ceci for her presentation, “AI Helps us Write – but at What Cost?”
“The science of science” is a quizzical, albeit accurate, description of Yian Yin’s research.
An assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Yin uses mathematical and computational methods to mine data and examine the factors that help (or hinder) scientific research and innovation.
“Science, technology, and innovation are the ultimate drivers of economic growth, but despite centuries of research on all kinds of things, it is indeed intriguing that we haven't really looked into the development of science in a scientific way,” Yin said.
Yin approaches the science of science as an interdisciplinary researcher in an interdisciplinary field – he’s a computational social scientist, a network scientist, an industrial engineer, and applied mathematician.
These same methods used to study the science of science, he said, also provide a unique lens to examine broader issues like climate change, fake news, privacy, and security.
Then, there are other research initiatives that, Yin jokes, have partly self-serving ends. Through quantitative analysis, he is challenging some of the assumptions about career success among scientists.
“I want to become a great scientist, so I want to understand, what are the patterns of a successful scientific career? When do people make their best work? How do scientific ideas spread within and across a scientific community?” Yin said. “These are valid research questions, but they’re also questions I’m generally interested in.”
“They share many career patterns that are similar to us, which I interpret as an encouraging signal,” he said.
His research has been covered in publications like Forbes, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Technology Review.
This past fall was Yin’s first official semester as a Cornell professor. He co-teaches “Networks,” an interdisciplinary course cross-listed in four departments that draws students from across diverse fields.
“This is a very big class” – more than 400 students – “and some people may see the class as challenging,” he said. “But talking about things I'm really excited about to hundreds of people three times a week, I actually see it as a privilege. I love the interactions.”
Leading Cornell’s Networks course has significant meaning to Yin. He was an undergraduate studying statistics and economics at Peking University in China when, less than enthused with the prospects of a career in abstract mathematical theory, he randomly attended a seminar led by a network scientist. The lecturer explained that patterns of human communication and connection could be found when turning mathematical and computational processes loose on messy data. That day, Yin became a network scientist. He pored over the seminal book on networks – “Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World,” written by Cornell professors David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. Today, Yin co-teaches that same course with Easley, using the original duo’s pioneering text.
“It’s a kind of cycle for me – I learned from these two scientists, and I’m now teaching the Networks class they led and paying it back to a broad community,” he said. “It’s an honor.” Looking ahead, Yin is most excited about collaborating with researchers in Cornell Bowers CIS and across the university. “This is the campus I want to be on,” he said. “As a network scientist and a science-of-science researcher, I feel Cornell is not one of, it is the campus where I want to be.”
Louis DiPietro is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
Thorsten Joachims and Andrew Myers, two faculty members from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, have each received prestigious named professorships in honor of past university luminaries.
Jacob Gould Schurman Professor
Joachims, professor of computer science and information science and Cornell Bowers CIS’s inaugural associate dean for research, has been named Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of computer science and information science, the sixth current Cornell faculty member to share the professorship named for the university’s third president. Joachims joins Éva Tardos, chair of computer science, as the second Jacob Gould Schurman Professor within Cornell Bowers CIS.
Joachims is a leading figure in artificial intelligence, particularly in the fields of machine learning and data mining. His research focuses on machine learning methods that enable intelligent systems to learn from their human users in applications ranging from search and recommendation systems to large language models. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence as well as the Association for Computing Machinery, and was selected as an inaugural member of the latter’s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval Academy in 2021. Joachims also received the Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Innovation Award in 2020. He has served previously as an action editor for both the Machine Learning Journal and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. Joachims received his Diplom and Ph.D. in computer science from the Universitat Dortmund, Germany, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He joined Cornell Bowers CIS in 2001.
The Jacob Gould Schurman Professorship of German Literature was established in 1967 by a gift from Jacob Gould Schurman III, who came to Cornell in 1886 as the first Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy. Four years later, he was named the first dean of the Sage School of Philosophy, and in 1892, became the third president of Cornell University. He served as president for 28 years, the longest presidency at the university to date, and in retirement, was the minister to China and then the ambassador to Germany. He passed away in 1942.
Class of 1912 Professor of Engineering
Myers, professor of computer science, has been named the Class of 1912 Professor of Engineering. He joins James Renegar of the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering as the university’s two current Class of 1912 Professors of Engineering.
A leader in computer security, Myers focuses on practical, sound, expressive languages and systems for enforcing information security. He is an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellow, a recipient of both an Alfred P. Sloan Research fellowship and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, and his research has received numerous other awards and honors. Myers is past editor-in-chief for ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) and past co-editor-in-chief for the Journal of Computer Security. He is a member of the scientific advisory board for Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI/SWS). Myers received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 1999. He joined Cornell Bowers CIS in 1999.
In 1963, shortly after its 50-year reunion, the Cornell class of 1912 raised funds and made an unrestricted gift, combining it with a gift from the Ford Foundation to establish the Class of 1912 Professor of Engineering. Floyd R. Newman, a member of the 1912 class and the Cornell Hall of Fame, was a driving force in establishing the professorship, working with classmates Frederick W. Krebs, class vice president, and Charles C. Colman, class representative, to help raise funds. In a letter to the class following the professorship’s creation, the trio commended classmates’ generosity and for seizing “the opportunity to express your gratitude to Cornell in such a way that Cornell will continue to perform as a great educational center.”
By Louis DiPietro, a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
The Cornell Center for Social Sciences (CCSS) has awarded 11 fellowships to Cornell faculty. The 2024-2025 cohort, representing seven Cornell colleges, will use their semester in residence at CCSS to research topics such as the impact of government support on clean energy innovation, the effects of pay transparency laws and the development of scalable interventions that could reduce the harm caused by online misinformation.
