Research Themes The overall goals of the Affective Social Computing Group are to enhance human-computer interaction (HCI) by enriching it with affective knowledge. Building upon the PI’s previous research, the work on affective social computing will expand different research themes, focusing on computational models of affective social cognitive intelligence by considering the notion of social expertise in terms of : (1) external communicative behavior and (2) internal motivational goal-based abilities.
Multimodal Affective User Interfaces
We are studying the role of emotions in communication, designing and developing computer systems and interfaces with increased "awareness" of their user's affective states and communication patterns in order to adapt appropriately to their users depending upon the application. Building upon the PI’s previous results, we will investigate different ways that the interpretation of multimodal physiological signals associated with emotional states can be visualized and responded to with the use of anthropomorphic agents and expressive graphical avatars having associated internal affective-cognitive states. Emotion-Based Architectures for Socially Intelligent Agents We are studying mechanisms to model computationally affective social cognitive intelligence to enhance both agents’ autonomy, and human-computer or human-robot interaction. Our approach will involve the design of an affective-cognitive hybrid architecture which, building upon the PI’s previous research, will synthesize affective-cognitive states for artificial agents. We will study ways to combine the reactive behavioural approach with the deliberative planning BDI approach (of modelling cognition in terms of Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions). | 
