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GIST NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS

September 2025

Big news for Dr. Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas
- She gave her British Science Award Lecture (she received the Digital Innovation Award) at the British Science Festival! https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/welcome/welcome-events/event/?id=7578
- She was featured in the Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/10dc5add-ed1c-4640-8ec4-25c6b41eed09
Prof. Margaret Burnett, Oregon State University gave not one but two guest lectures:
- "Mission: To enable diverse mere mortals to assess an AI agent's "goodness"
- "Gender-Inclusive Software and Beyond"

New publications from section members:

Wilson, G., Russell, H., O’Hagan, J., & McGill, M. (2025, October 8–12). Big Frog Vibes: Jumping superhuman distances forward, vertically and sideways in VR using comfortably high translational gain. In IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2025). https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/368252/
Mohammed Safayet Arefin, Verena Biener, Nijhum Hasan S M Rashidul, Florian Weidner, Jens Grubert, and J. Edward Swan. 2025. The State of Replication at IEEE ISMAR and IEEE VR: A Scoping Literature Review (2010–2024) and Online Survey. In 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2025). https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR67309.2025.00086
Haopeng Wang, Florian Weidner, Yasmeen Abdrabou, Ken Pfeuffer, and Hans Gellersen. 2025. HeadDepth: Gaze Raycasting with Head Pitch for Depth Control. In 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2025). https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR67309.2025.00048
Valerio, R., & Mahmoud, M. (2025, October 13–17). A multimodal framework for exploring behavioural cues in automatic stress detection. In International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2025). https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/362335/
Taka, E., Bhattacharya, D., Garde-Hansen, J., Sharma, S., & Guha, T. (2025, October 13–17). Analyzing character representation in media content using multimodal foundation model: Effectiveness and trust. In International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2025). https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/359989/
Luo, L., Nakao, Y., Chollet, M., Inakoshi, H., & Stumpf, S. (2025, October 18–22). EARN Fairness: Explaining, asking, reviewing, and negotiating artificial intelligence fairness metrics among stakeholders. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW 2025). https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/342761/
Léchappé, A., Fleury, C., Chollet, M., & Dumas, C. (2025, October 18–22). How to categorize collaboration during a collaborative puzzle-solving task? Validation of collaboration profiles using multimodal data in virtual reality context. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW 2025). https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/336630/
Bian, T., Chollet, M., & Guha, T. (2025, October 27–31). Robust understanding of human-robot social interactions through multimodal distillation. In ACM Multimedia 2025 https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/359988/

August 2025

IEEE RO-MAN 2025 recap!
Five members of GIST -- Mary Ellen Foster, Shaul Ashkenazi, Andrew Blair, Amelie Voges, and Shaun Macdonald -- attended the 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2025) in Eindhoven, Netherlands, from 25 to 29 August 2025.
Over the week, the team presented three full papers and three late-breaking papers, each exploring innovative approaches to designing and deploying robots in private and public spaces. They also co-organised two topical workshops, sparking lively discussion and collaboration with the international HRI community.
- Full papers:
  - Ashkenazi, Shaul, Skantze, Gabriel, Stuart-Smith, Jane, and Foster, Mary Ellen. The Multilingual Student Support Robot. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/357490/
  - Blair, Andrew, Gregory, Peggy, and Foster, Mary Ellen. A Blessing or a Burden? Exploring Worker Perspectives of Using a Social Robot in a Church. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/357487/
  - Voges, Amelie, Foster, Mary Ellen, and Cross, Emily S. What Was I Made for? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Layperson-Designed Robots. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/357488/
- Late-breaking reports:
  - Voges, Amelie, Cross, Emily, and Foster, Mary Ellen. A Robot of One’s Own: The Impact of User-Driven Customization on Human–Robot Interactions. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/362897/
  - Ashkenazi, Shaul, Webber, Bonnie and Wolters, Maria. Effective Recovery Strategies in Conversations with Older Adults. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/362935/
  - Macdonald, Shaun, ElSayed, Salma and McGill, Mark. AZRA: Extending the Affective Capabilities of Zoomorphic Robots using Augmented Reality. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/364521/
- Workshops co-organised by GIST members
  - RAS4RASM: Robots and Autonomous Systems for Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migrants https://ras4rasm.github.io/
  - Real-World HRI in Public and Private Spaces: Successes, Failures, and Lessons Learned (PubRob-Fails 2025) https://www.pubrob.org/events/2025
    - Blair, Andrew, Gregory, Peggy, and Foster, Mary Ellen. Observations of atypical users from a pilot deployment of a public-space social robot in a church. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.16622
    - Ashkenazi, Shaul, Skantze, Gabriel, Stuart-Smith, Jane, and Foster, Mary Ellen. Into the Wild: When Robots Are Not Welcome. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.12075
- Fantastic work of the whole team! Congrats on the great performance!

More publications from GIST:
- IEEE 21st International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE 2025) · 17-21 August 2025
  System As A Collaborator (SAAC): a Framework for Modeling, Capturing and Augmenting Collaborative Activities in Extended Reality
  Aurélien Léchappé, Aurélien Milliat, Alexandre Kabil, Mathieu Chollet, Cédric Dumas

July 2025

Alessandro Vinciarelli, Tanaya Guha, Mathieu Chollet, and CDT students Benjamin Gutierrez Serafin and Emily Smith took part in the AIDA AICET 2025 "AI/ML cutting edge trends" summer school. They delivered a tutorial on "Introduction to Social AI". More info on the event here https://icarus.csd.auth.gr/aida-auth-ai-cutting-edge-trends-aicet2025-summer-symposium-and-school/
Noora Alsakar and Melvin Abraham submitted their PhD theses!
Habiba Farzand and Robin Bretin have both had their graduation ceremony to receive their PhD degrees, supervised by Mohamed Khamis!
New research!
- 2025 ACM Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) Conference · 8-10 July 2025
  - Aye, Robot: What Happens When Robots Speak Like Real People? Mary Ellen Foster, Jane Stuart-Smith, Muneeb I. Ahmad, Julian Hough
  - Lowering the Barrier: Conversational Interfaces as a Novice-Friendly Path to Data Visualisation Callum Mackinnon, Mary Ellen Foster
- ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2025) · 05-09 Jul 2025
  - Reflecting Upon the Unintended Consequences of Personal Informatics Systems: a Systematic Review of Empirical Studies Yuhan Luo, Xinning Gui, Xianghua (Sharon) Ding, Xi Zheng, Rie Helene (Lindy) Hernandez, Zhuoyang Li, Qiurong Song
  - Smiles, Frowns, and Everything In Between: Understanding User Experiences with Emotion Tracking in Daily Life through Facial Expression Recognition Zhennan Yi, Xianghua (Sharon) Ding, Chenyang You, Xingchen Zhou

June 2025

Mary Ellen Foster presented a poster last week at the International Symposium on Paediatric Pain at the SEC, where she also demonstrated the robot system developed as part of her recent project, which drew considerable interest from attendees!
Mathieu Chollet delivered an invited lecture at the MindXR conference in Berlin (https://mindxr.info/) and did a seminar at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany
Cristina Fiani won first place for the Innovate UK Immersive Tech Award for her work on Child Safety in the metaverse. More info here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7337420818336935937/.
Lots of promotions for GIST members:
- Mohamed Khamis to Professor!
- Julie Williamson to Professor!
- Mathieu Chollet to Senior Lecturer!
- Marwa Mahmoud Anis to Senior Lecturer!
- Patrizia Di Campli San Vito to Grade 8!
Lots of new publications from GIST:
- International Symposium on Paediatric Pain (ISPP 2025) · 17-20 June 2025
  A Socially Assistive Robot with Emotional and Cognitive-Based Coping Strategies for Children During Distressing Medical Procedures
  Mary Ellen Foster, Alan Lindsay, Andres Ramirez-Duque, Ronald P.A. Petrick
- 17th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2025) · 23-27 June 2025
  Engineering Safe and Trustworthy AI: The Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches and Methodologies (PHAWM) Project
  Simone Stumpf, Patrizia Di Campli San Vito, Cari Hyde-Vaamonde, Gefion Thuermer, Elena Simperl, Ayah Soufan, Yashar Moshfeghi, Eva Fringi, Penny Johnston, Yunhyong Kim
- 24th annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC 2025) · 23-26 Jun 2025
  “Abracadabra, Block the Bullies!”: Child Perceptions of Manual, Semi-Automated and Automated Interventions against Group Harassment in Social VR
  Cristina Fiani, Robin Bretin, Mark McGill, Mohamed Khamis
- EvalLLM2025 : Atelier sur l'évaluation des modèles génératifs (LLM) et challenge · 30 June 2025
  Décoder le pouvoir de persuasion dans les concours d’éloquence : une étude sur la capacité des modèles de langues à évaluer la prise de parole en public
  Alisa Barkar, Mathieu Chollet, Matthieu Labeau, Beatrice Biancardi, Chloe Clavel
- IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) 2025 · 30 June-4 July 2025
  Interact with Me: Joint Egocentric Forecasting of Intent to Interact, Attitude and Social Actions
  Tongfei Bian, Yiming Ma, Mathieu Chollet, Victor Sanchez, Tanaya Guha

May 2025

Dr. Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas organized a workshop with children at the Falkirk Council's Wild Science event, applying methods from her recent research (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3459990.3460697).
Ph.D. student Jiaqi Wang presented her recent research "Reshaping Human-Animal Relationships: Exploring Lemur and Human Enrichment through Smell, Sound, and Sight" at the Accoustic Enrichment Interest Group.
Two new publications from GIST:
- 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation · 19-23 May 2025
  Understanding Dynamic Human-Robot Proxemics in the Case of Four-Legged Canine-Inspired Robots
  Xiangmin Xu, Zhen Meng, Emma Li, Mohamed Khamis, Philip G. Zhao, Robin Bretin
- 19th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2025) · 27-29 May 2025
  Boosting Tiny Face Detection in Videos with an Integral Score Framework
  Roberto Leyva, Guodong Shen, Ozan Bahadir, Victor Sanchez, Tanaya Guha

April 2025

The GIST research section has significantly impacted the premier CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, showcasing diverse contributions pushing the boundaries of human-computer interaction. This year, the section is proud to present 14 groundbreaking papers, five late-breaking works, one alt.chi contribution, and the co-organization of two workshops.

Conference and Journal papers:
1. A. Al-Taie, E. Freeman, F. Pollick, and S. A. Brewster, “evARything, evARywhere, all at once: Exploring Scalable Holistic Autonomous Vehicle-Cyclist Interfaces,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–18. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713412.
2. A. Al-Taie, A. Matviienko, J. O’Hagan, F. Pollick, and S. A. Brewster, “Around the World in 60 Cyclists: Evaluating Autonomous Vehicle-Cyclist Interfaces Across Cultures,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2025, pp. 1–18. Accessed: Apr. 25, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713407
3. A. Bhattacharya, S. Stumpf, R. De Croon, and K. Verbert, “Explanatory Debiasing: Involving Domain Experts in the Data Generation Process to Mitigate Representation Bias in AI Systems,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–20. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713497.
4. R. Kleinberger, L. Ashooh, K. Farsad, and I. Hirskyj-Douglas, “Animals’ Entanglement with Technology: a Scoping Review,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–22. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713384.
5. V. Krauß et al., “What Makes XR Dark? Examining Emerging Dark Patterns in Augmented and Virtual Reality through Expert Co-Design,” ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact., vol. 31, no. 3, p. 32:1-32:39, Aug. 2024, doi: 10.1145/3660340.
6. V. Krauß, M. McGill, T. Kosch, Y. M. Thiel, D. Schön, and J. Gugenheimer, “‘Create a Fear of Missing Out’ - ChatGPT Implements Unsolicited Deceptive Designs in Generated Websites Without Warning,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–20. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713083.
7. A. Léchappé, R. Johnstone, A. Milliat, J. H. Williamson, M. Chollet, and J. R. Williamson, “Understanding Social Interactions in Reality Versus Virtuality,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2025, pp. 1–18. Accessed: Apr. 25, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713628
8. S. MacDonald, E. Freeman, F. Pollick, and S. Brewster, “Prototyping and Evaluation of Emotionally Resonant Vibrotactile Comfort Objects as a Calming Social Anxiety Intervention,” ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact., vol. 31, no. 4, p. 46:1-46:48, Sep. 2024, doi: 10.1145/3648615.
9. O. Namnakani, Y. Abdrabou, J. Grizou, and M. Khamis, “Stretch Gaze Targets Out: Experimenting with Target Sizes for Gaze-Enabled Interfaces on Mobile Devices,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–16. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713092.
10. R. Srour Zreik, M. Harvey, and S. A. Brewster, “All-inclusive TORs: Cross-Cultural and Age-Sensitive Design for Take-Over Requests in Level 3 Cars,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–17. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713451.
11. J. Wang, S. A. Brewster, and I. Hirskyj-Douglas, “Reshaping Human-Animal Relationships: Exploring Lemur and Human Enrichment through Smell, Sound, and Sight,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–19. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713311.
12. K. Waugh, M. McGill, and E. Freeman, “Everything to Gain: Combining Area Cursors with increased Control-Display Gain for Fast and Accurate Touchless Input,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–16. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3714021.
13. G. Wilson, J. McCready, E. Freeman, F. Mathis, H. Russell, and M. McGill, “InterFACE: Establishing a Facial Action Unit Input Vocabulary for Hands-Free Extended Reality Interactions, From VR Gaming to AR Web Browsing,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–23. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713694.
14. G. Wilson, K. M. T. Pöhlmann, D. Al Baiaty Suarez, M. McGill, and S. A. Brewster, “The Spin Doctor: Leveraging Insensitivity to Passive Rotational & Translational Gain For Unbounded Motion-Based VR Experiences,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–19. doi: 10.1145/3706598.3713455.

Late-Breaking Works
1. D. Drago, J. Bhattacharyya, F. Kawsar, and S. A. Brewster, “The Effects of Physical Context on Collaborator Placement in Augmented Reality Meetings,” in Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI EA ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–12. doi: 10.1145/3706599.3720195.
2. “Exploring Avatar Seat Allocation Strategies in Social AR | Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.” Accessed: Apr. 25, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3719867
3. H. Farzand, A. Farooq, J. Salminen, and B. J. Jansen, “When Scales Fail to Measure Up: How Not to Measure Social Media Privacy--Findings of a Representative Survey in 16 Countries,” in Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI EA ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–9. doi: 10.1145/3706599.3720138.
4. D. Drago, J. O’Hagan, F. Kawsar, and S. A. Brewster, “Exploring Avatar Seat Allocation Strategies in Social AR,” in Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI EA ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–7. doi: 10.1145/3706599.3719867.
5. M. Rooksby, T. J. Goetz, Y. Muto, and E. S. Cross, “How do people in the UK and Japan imagine an encounter with a robot?: a story-stem study,” in Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI EA ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–6. doi: 10.1145/3706599.3720127.

In addition to that, the section contributes one alt.chi article and co-organizes two workshops:

alt.chi: J. Farao, A. G. Pillai, H. Mthoko, M. M. Samuel, M. Atwa, and S. Lazem, “‘This Journey is Never Truly Over, For the Ball I Carry is Always Moving’: Future Obituaries and End-of-Life First Design,” in Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI EA ’25. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–10. doi: 10.1145/3706599.3716237.
Workshops
- “CHI 2025 Workshop ‘Grasping Data: Mapping Out HCI Methods for Children and Young People’s Interactions with their Personal Data’ | Digital Education.” Accessed: Apr. 25, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.de.ed.ac.uk/research-areas/children-technology/chi-2025-workshop-grasping-data-mapping-out-hci-methods-children
- “CHI 2025 Workshop: Weaving Indigeneity and Culture.” Accessed: Apr. 25, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://sites.google.com/view/weavingfuturechi/home

The collective efforts of the GIST section at CHI 2025 highlight their commitment to advancing human-computer interaction through innovative research and collaborative initiatives.

June 2024

A variety of our work was demonstrated at Glasgow's Science Festival

May 2024

Dr Simone Stumpf was successful in funding the Keystone Project “Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches and Methodologies”. Funded with £3.5 million by Responsible Ai UK for 47 months, involving 20 academic co-investigators across a number of disciplines in 7 universities, and 24 partner organisations.

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GIST NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS