Institute for Creative Technologies

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Sin-Hwa Kang is a postdoctoral research associate in the Computational Emotion Group at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. She obtained a M.Sc. from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute majoring in communication with concentration in human-computer interaction.

Kang's research focuses on affective human-agent interaction in one-on-one social interaction. She adopts interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches to her research, specifically in social psychological contexts. Kang has been participating in National Science Foundation funded projects where she works on modeling a novel approach to explore interactants' perceptions of copresence and the medium itself, including the adoption of virtual humans over emotionally engaged and computer-mediated interaction. She is currently doing research on investigating virtual humans as virtual counselors and appeared in The New York Times with her work ("In Cybertherapy, Avatars Assist With Healing"). Kang recently received the "New Investigator Award" at the CyberTherapy & CyberPsychology 2011 conference.

Visit Sin-hwa Kang's homepage.