We work on simulating face-to-face counseling, primarily in health education and health behavior change interventions, with a particular focus on the relational aspects of these interactions and how they unfold over time.
We are investigating the use of these Relational Agents in task domains in which human-agent relationships actually improve task outcomes, such as in coaching, counseling, psychotherapy and healthcare.
explore our projects explore our publicationsIan Steenstra, Farnaz Nouraei, Armin Arjmand, and Timothy Bickmore won Best Paper Award at the 2024 ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
September, 2024
$1.1M NLM Award to develop conversational agent to explain medical illustrations to patients
September, 2023.
$650K NIDA Award to develop conversational agent to promote adherence to Office Based Addiction Treatment for individuals recovering from opioid misuse
September, 2023.
VA Award to develop conversational agent to provide ACT counseling to veterans with chronic pain
November, 2023.
Bickmore gave a Keynote at the Health Literacy Annual Research Conference (HARC)
October, 2023.
Our team advance the state of the art through research and software engineering.
meet the team