Congratulations to Dr. Heishman!

Congratulations to Dr. Ric Heishman! My computer science professor was just awarded his PhD at GMU today after giving his final defense:

Interactions between humans and computers can be augmented via recognition of human affective and cognitive states by the machine participant. Signals emitted by the human face have long been of interest to researchers in a wide range of fields for their usefulness as state indicators. Biometrics related to the eye region are of particular interest in a range of applications – from identification to adaptive interfaces.

This thesis explores the potential of static and dynamic eye region biometrics as unique indicators of fatigue and cognitive engagement, and the impact of ambiguous eye region behaviors (e.g., partial blinks and asymmetric eyelid movements) on this process. Fatigue and engagement were selected as representative affective and cognitive states given their frequent entwined presence in commonly occurring HCI scenarios.

To facilitate analysis, we integrate a novel collection of dynamic, minimally-intrusive computer vision techniques for effective interpretation of eye blink behaviors relative to fatigue and engagement. Our experiments involve a total of twelve subjects engaged in various fatigue-engagement based HCI scenarios, providing approximately 1.5M color video frames for analysis.

Dr. Heishman will be moving from the faculty of NOVA Community College to join GMU's Computer Science department this fall.