Human Computer Interaction Research Group
Research in the HCI group focuses on how people interact with information, relying on language technology (including text and multimedia mining), visualization and computer graphics. The focus is on new algorithms and interaction techniques, using the full spectrum of hardware from small mobile devices to large multi- touch displays. Applications include technology enhanced learning, music, research information systems and virtual worlds.
More specifically, our research themes include:
- Information Visualization and recommendations: We capture user interactions in the form of so-called attention metadata. By visualizing these data, we provide dashboards that enable users to steer their activities in a "quantified self" kind of way. Moreover, we also mine attention metadata for recommendations of resources, activities and people.
- Computer graphics: Image-based relighting algorithms. Global Illumination: perception-based, real-time, complex visibility, bidirectional transport, mathematical frameworks. Point-based graphics. And Texture Synthesis & Procedural textures.
- Text based information retrieval and search: Specifically for text content, we work on recognition, information extraction, classification and filtering, text mining, both from well-formed and noisy texts, the latter including spam mails, spammed Web sites and blogs. Cross-media and cross-lingual alignment and summarization of content enables knowledge acquisition from text.
Our work is at the core of the technical infrastructure of the ARIADNE Foundation. In 2006, we created two spin-off companies (Aristomusic and @mire): we continue to collaborate with them in joint research.
Moreover, we partner in two European FP-6 STREP projects, CLASS and AntiPhish, in the FP-7 European infrastructure project CLARIN, in the European ITEA 2 project LINDO, and in the Dutch-Flemish Stevin project CORNETTO. We coordinate the Flemish IWT-SBO project AMASS++ and the International Flanders CADIAL project. We are the sole academic partner in the projects TIME (IWOIB sponsored) and ACILA (K.U.Leuven sponsored).
