Ph.D. Student

Human-Computer Interaction

Carnegie Mellon University

Alexandria K. Vail

curriculum vitae

contact

avail@cs.cmu.edu

I am a Ph.D. student with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I am currently advised by Dr. Louis-Philippe Morency as part of The MultiComp Lab in the Language Technologies Institute.

I was previously a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at North Carolina State University, co-advised by Dr. Kristy Boyer and Dr. James Lester, where I was a member of the The LearnDialogue Group and The Intellimedia Group, housed within the Center for Educational Informatics.

I received the B.S. degree in Computer Science and the B.S. degree in Mathematics from North Carolina State University in 2015, with minor specializations in Cognitive Science and Physics.

I earned an Outstanding Paper Award at the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP 2016) and an Exemplary Paper Award at the Ninth International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2016). I also received the Best Paper Award at the Twenty-Third International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP 2015).

Working under a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, my research interests include user modeling, affective computing, and multimodal behavior analysis, particularly within the context of healthcare and learning technologies.

Thesis Proposal

  • A. Vail, Multimodal and Dyadic Modeling of Client-Therapist Interaction: An Interpretable and Causal Strategy.
    16 November 2022. [pdf]

Journal Publications

  • J. Girard*, A. Vail*, E. Liebenthal, K. Brown, C. Kilciksiz, L. Pennant, E. Liebson, D. Öngür, L.-P. Morency, J. Baker. Computational Analysis of Spoken Language in Acute Psychosis and Mania. Schizophrenia Research, 2021.
    (*equal contribution)
    [journal article] [sciencedirect] [psyarxiv] [pdf]

Conference Publications

  • A. Vail, J. Girard, L. Bylsma, J. Cohn, J. Fournier, H. Swartz, L.-P. Morency. Toward Causal Understanding of Therapist-Client Relationships: A Study of Language Modality and Social Entrainment. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2022), Bangalore, India, 2022.
    [long paper] [acm] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, J. Girard, L. Bylsma, J. Cohn, J. Fournier, H. Swartz, L.-P. Morency. Goals, Tasks, and Bonds: Toward the Computational Assessment of Therapist Versus Client Perception of Working Alliance. Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2021), Jodhpur, India, 2021.
    [long paper] [ieee] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, E. Liebson, J. Baker, L.-P. Morency. Toward Objective, Multifaceted Characterization of Psychotic Disorders: Lexical, Structural, and Disfluency Markers of Spoken Language. Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2018), Boulder, Colorado, 2018.
    [long paper] [acm] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, T. Baltrušaitis, L. Pennant, E. Liebson, J. Baker, L.-P. Morency. Visual Attention in Schizophrenia: Eye Contact and Gaze Aversion during Clinical Interactions. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2017), San Antonio, Texas, 2017.
    [long paper] [ieee] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, J. Grafsgaard, K. Boyer, E. Wiebe, and J. Lester. Gender Differences in Facial Expressions of Affect During Learning. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP 2016), Halifax, Canada, 2016.
    Outstanding Paper Award.
    [long paper] [acm] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, J. Wiggins, J. Grafsgaard, K. Boyer, E. Wiebe, and J. Lester. The Affective Impact of Tutor Questions: Predicting Frustration and Engagement. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2016), Raleigh, North Carolina, 2016.
    Exemplary Paper Award.
    [long paper] [edm] [pdf]
  • W. Min, J. Wiggins, L. Pezzullo, A. Vail, K. Boyer, B. Mott, M. Frankosky, E. Wiebe, and J. Lester. Predicting Dialogue Acts for Intelligent Virtual Agents with Multimodal Student Interaction Data. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2016), Raleigh, North Carolina, 2016.
    [short paper] [edm] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, J. Grafsgaard, K. Boyer, E. Wiebe, and J. Lester. Predicting Learning from Student Affective Response to Tutor Questions. Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2016), Zagreb, Croatia, 2016.
    [long paper] [springer] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, K. Boyer, E. Wiebe, and J. Lester. The Mars and Venus Effect: The Influence of User Gender on the Effectiveness of Adaptive Task Support. Proceedings of the Twenty-Third International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP 2015), Dublin, Ireland, 2015.
    Best Paper Award.
    [long paper] [springer] [pdf]
  • A. Vail, J. Grafsgaard, J. Wiggins, J. Lester, and K. Boyer. Predicting Learning and Engagement in Tutorial Dialogue: A Personality-Based Model. Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2014), Istanbul, Turkey, 2014.
    [long paper] [acm] [pdf]
  • J. Grafsgaard, J. Wiggins, A. Vail, K. Boyer, E. Wiebe, and J. Lester. The Additive Value of Multimodal Features for Predicting Engagement, Frustration, and Learning During Tutoring. Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2014), Istanbul, Turkey, 2014.
    Nominated for Outstanding Paper Award.
    [long paper] [acm] [pdf]
  • A. Vail and K. Boyer. Adapting to Personality Over Time: Examining the Effectiveness of Dialogue Policy Progressions in Task-Oriented Interaction. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL 2014), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2014.
    [long paper] [acl] [pdf]
  • A. Vail and K. Boyer. Identifying Effective Moves in Tutoring: On the Refinement of Dialogue Act Annotation Schemes. Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2014), Honolulu, Hawaii, 2014.
    [long paper] [springer] [pdf]