Stacy Marsella, Professor of Psychology and Computer and Information Science
Congratulations to Professor Stacy Marsella who recently gave the 53rd Robert D. Klein Lecture. His talk, “How and why we simulate human behavior,” was delivered on Monday, March 20, 2017 in the Raytheon Amphitheatre.
The Klein University Lecturer Award, established in 1964 upon the recommendation of the Faculty Senate, honors a member of the teaching faculty who has contributed with distinction to his or her own field of study. The University Lecture enables that faculty member to share the fruits of that scholarship with the university community and the general public. In 1979, the award was renamed in tribute to the late Robert D. Klein, professor of mathematics, chairman of the Faculty Senate Agenda Committee, and vice chairman of the Faculty Senate.
Professor Marsella’s research is in the computational modeling of emotion, cognition, and social behavior, both as a basic research method in the study of human behavior as well as the use of these computational models in a range of applications. His current research studies the interplay of emotion and cognition in decision-making as well as the role that beliefs about others and nonverbal behavior play in social interaction. He pursues a highly interdisciplinary approach that integrates methods and models from computer science, psychology, and art.
His work is being applied to the design of virtual humans, software entities that look human and can interact with humans in a virtual environment. This technology is being used in education, health interventions, and entertainment, and as stimuli for experiments in social psychology. In addition, his work on modeling and simulating human behavior is utilized in large scale simulations of social behavior. His research is currently funded by NSF, NIH, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research.
To read the article about his talk recently published in the News@Northeastern, click here.
Well done, Professor Marsella!
