Virginia Tech® home

CHCI Student Research Symposium 2023

May 1, 2023

The CHCI Student Council hosted the 3rd annual Student Research Symposium on Friday, April 21, 2023. The goal of the symposium was to celebrate the creativity and scholarship of CHCI students and provide feedback from fellow CHCI members in an inclusive and supportive environment. The event was immediately preceded by an end-of-year Center-wide meeting providing updates and highlights from the year and hearing news from faculty and student participants.

At the Student Research Symposium, 20 teams comprising 41 students presented their research in poster format. The event was very engaging and interactive. There were a total of around 90 attendees that included graduates and undergraduate students and faculty from 11 different departments.

Show Stoppers

Pepper (the big white robot), Milo (the robot that has a human face), and Aibo (the robot puppy) from Mind and Music Lab made a splash at the event. Pepper can be programmed to have different gestures and speech; Milo can provide different facial expressions; and Aibo can do many tricks. All three robots are used in one of the robot theater programs to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) education to children.

Celebrating Student Research

The CHCI Student Council celebrated all students who presented research at the symposium. As a token of acknowledgement, each participant received a customized CHCI Student Research Symposium Sticker designed by council member Sara Saghafi Moghaddam.  A Hack-n-Yak sticker designed by council member Muskan Gupta was also distributed among students and faculty.

Awards were conferred for best poster, demo, and video through tallies of attendees' votes on their favorite research projects. 

Four projects won awards.  Each awardee received a custom designed mug.

  • Mia Saade and Hayoun Moon won first place for “Sonifying Solar System for Socially Interactive Mixed Reality Experience.” 

  • Shane Bennett and Priya Nair won second place for “VR Solar System Explorer.” 

  • Andy Lu, Jianguyue Li, and Daniel Manesh won third place for “Octave.”

  • Daniel Enriquez and Andrew Stewart won fourth place for “Large Scale Object Manipulation in XR.”

Many thanks to student council President Kylie Davidson, and members Levern Currie, Daniel Enriquez, Katharina Reis Farina, Shafiqul, Daniel Manesh, Leo Pavanatto, Sara Saghafi Moghaddam, Tony Lee, Muskan Gupta, Merna Khamis, Tianzhi He and Anirudh More for their incredible effort in making this event a grand success! Special thanks to Justin Kerobo, Minhyuk Ko and Shreya Mitra for their help.

Below is the complete list of student teams and their project topics that they presented. 

Student name(s)

Project title

Matthew Thompsen, Hamza Al Matar
Automated Vehicle Design for Older Drivers
Mia Saade, Hayoun Moon, Daniel Enriquez, Yeaji Lee, Sangwon Lee, Myounghoon Jeon
Sonifying Solar System for Socially Interactive Mixed Reality Experience
Jacqueline Bruen, Henry Kwon, Rakesh Pillai, Myounghoon Jeon
Cro-Create: A Collaborative Crochet Music Maker for Physical Creation Together
Mungyeong Choe, Kathryn Sloan, Ahmad Abu Shamat, Myounghoon Jeon
Effects of Empathic In-vehicle Agents on Driver Behavior in Frustrating Driving Contexts
Manhua Wang, Ravi Parikh, Myounghoon Jeon
Using Multilevel Hidden Markov Models to Understand Driver Hazard Avoidance during the Takeover Process in Conditionally Automated Vehicles
Emily Altland and Muskan Gupta
Investigating Social Media Users' Perceptions on Trigger and Content Warnings
Yingjie Zhao
Robot Sonification
Jiayuan Dong, Isabella Villarente, Matthew Soohoo, Myounghoon Jeon
Emotion & Trust on Social Robots in the Escape Room
Yeaji Lee, Ziming Fang
Sonification of Children’s Fairy Tales based on Sentiment Analysis
Daniel Enriquez, Andrew Stewart, Hayoun Moon, Dr. Sang Won Lee, and Dr. Myounghoon Jeon
Large Scale Object Manipulation in XR
Jiayuan Dong, Joon Hyun Shim, Rashed Amad, Myounghoon Jeon
Raising Awareness of DEI through Robot Theater
Sophie Thompsen, Spencer Morrison
fMRI Data Sonification
Manhua Wang, Megan Fok, Sunwook Kim, Arthur Louie Deapera, Molly Zuidema, Agela Scarpa-Friedman, Myounghoon Jeon
Exploring Collaboration Patterns in the Neurodiverse Team Setting
Manhua Wang, Ryan Palani, Myounghoon Jeon
Study Title Ease your rage on the road: applying affective strategies to train young drivers in mitigating anger effect on driving performance
Atlas Vernier, Mary Pletcher, Jake Pierson, Leanne Shahin, Dr. Rafael N. C. Patrick, Jacob Kerstiens
Utilizing Extended Reality Platforms for Diverse and Inclusive Recruitment
Hye Sung Moon, Hayoun Moon, Grady Orr, Kristina Pratt, Myounghoon Jeon
VR Haptic Glove
Chelsea Haines, Myounghoon Jeon, Sangwon Lee, Phyllis Newbill, Todd Ogle, Sarah Tucker, Carlos Bautista, Daniel Enriquez, Hayoun Moon, Shane Bennett, Macey Cohn, Matthew Gallagher, Leah Ican, Clara McDaniel, Priya Nair, Nayha Pochiraju, Karina Springer, Atlas Vernier
VR Solar System Explorer
Caitlyn Sanford, Abhraneil Dam
Verification of Motion Sickness Induction Method Using a Driving Simulator
Daniel Vargas-Diaz, Sulakna Karunaratna
Tale Mate
Abhraneil Dam, Yeaji Lee, and Arsh Siddiqui
Enhancing Art Gallery Visitors' Experience through Audio AR Technology
Andy Luu, Daniel Manesh, Jiangyue Li, Mohammad Khalid, Chinedu Okonkwo, Ibukun Awolusi, Abiola Akanmu, Sang Won Lee
Octave