Essays
How Language Models Form Social Impressions (and what that reveals)
By Ala N. Tak, PhD Candidate, Computer Science, Viterbi School of Engineering; Research Assistant, Affective Computing Group, ICT My recent paper,...
Advancing Human-Computer Interaction Research at ICT (and SIGGRAPH 2025 Recognition)
Mark Harmon is a Software Developer at the UBC Emerging Media Lab, University of British Columbia and spending the summer at ICT as part of our...
Embodied Companion AI Agents & Society
Spencer Lin is an AI & XR researcher/developer at ICT, with a passion for building embodied socially interactive AI agents. He holds both...
Lighting Precision: Building the Next Light Stage
By Stanley Lin, Cinematographer, Imaging Researcher (volunteering at the Vision & Graphics Lab on our next Light Stage) When I first visited the...
Bridging Engineering and Medicine: Improving Health Outcomes Through Wearable Technology
Aleena Imran is a dual-degree graduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering from USC, and was Commencement Speaker for...
HCI International Conference Accepts FIVE Papers from ICT’s Human-Centered AI Lab
BYLINE: Dr. Ning Wang, Director, Human-Centered AI Lab, USC ICT I am proud to share that the Human-Centered AI Lab at USC's Institute for Creative...
Language Models with Body Language: Advancing Gesture Selection for Virtual Humans
As part of our summer research series, spotlighting early-career scientists advancing the frontiers of human–AI interaction, we’re pleased to share...
Investigating Emotional Reasoning and Appraisal Bias in LLMs
BYLINE: Ala N. Tak, PhD Candidate, Computer Science, Viterbi School of Engineering; Research Assistant, Affective Computing Group As a PhD candidate...
On Understanding Humans Through Machines: A Journey into Multimodal Affective Computing
Kevin Hyekang Joo is an AI researcher at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT), and a PhD student in the Thomas Lord Department of...