Abstract: How can we create technologies to help us reflect on and change our behavior if needed and improve our health and overall wellbeing both at work and at home? In this talk, I will briefly describe the last several years of work our research team has been doing in this area. We have developed wearable technology to help families manage tense situations with their children, mobile phone-based applications for handling stress and depression, as well as automatic sensing systems for tracking well-being over time. Our latest focus agents can help you with planning and focus and recommend good times to take a break at work. The overarching goal in all of this research is to develop intelligent systems and agents that work with the user so that they can maximize their goals and improve their wellbeing over time.

Bio: Dr. Mary Czerwinski is a Partner Research Manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy (HUE) Research Group at Microsoft Research. Mary’s latest research focuses primarily on behavior change and intervention design, health and wellness for individuals and productivity at work. Her research background is in visual attention and multitasking. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington. Mary received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, was inducted into the CHI Academy and received the Distinguished Alumni award from Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences. Mary is a Fellow of the ACM and the American Psychological Science Association. More information about Dr. Czerwinski can be found at her website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/marycz/.