Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University

Justine Cassell’s research interests originated in the study of human-human conversation and storytelling. Progressively she became interested in allowing computational systems to participate in these activities. This new technological focus led her to deconstruct the linguistic elements of conversation and storytelling in such a way as to embody machines with conversational, social and narrative intelligence so that they could interact with humans in human-like ways. Increasingly, however, her research has come to address the impact and benefits of technologies such as these on learning and communication. Cassell is the director emerita of the HCII. Currently, in addition to her role as a professor, Cassell is also associate dean of the School of Computer Science for technology strategy and impact at CMU, co-director of the university’s Simon Initiative, and co-director of the university’s Yahoo-InMind collaboration.