Artificial Intelligence Researcher

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I currently serve as an assistant professor and Chair of the Health Informatics program at DePaul University in Chicago, IL, in the Department of Computing & Digital Media (CDM), as well as a professor of data science at Hanyang University in Seoul (Korea).  I was formerly a senior data scientist at several of the largest healthcare organizations in the world: Cigna, CVS Health, and Centerstone Research Institute (CRI). I received my PhD from the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. Casey Bennett - TEDx Nashville

My work focuses on artificial intelligence & robotics in healthcare, including the areas of human-robot interaction, machine learning, data science, internet-of-things (IOT), digital health technologies, clinical decision support, and personalized medicine. I am currently working on research projects using robotic pets for therapeutic purposes with elderly patients, development of robotic sensor systems for tracking in-home patient health, and studying social cognition through human-robot interaction to create more life-like AI devices.  We get to do cool stuff like teach robots how to play video games and make furry cuddly robot pets, while also developing cutting-edge machine learning models (meta-learning, generative models, multi-modal transformers, etc.) that push the boundaries of AI in healthcare.

In my past, I have served as PI for studies on implementation of AI-driven clinical decision support technology in real-world settings for mental health, dementia, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses.  I have also led teams developing robotic sensor systems for improving everyday health beyond the clinic, as well as interactive robotic faces.  I've published dozens of scientific articles, done interviews for national and international magazines like ComputerWorld and Slate, and been a guest on nationally syndicated radio talk shows. My work has also been featured as a TED talk and as part of IBM's “Smarter Planet” campaign. 


*For prospective graduate students: I currently have 1-2 open positions in my research lab (한국 학생 위해서, 또한 저는 한국어로 말할 수 있습니다).  For outstanding applicants, research funding is available to help cover the cost of tuition. You will need to apply through DePaul University (Link here).  I am primarily in the Health Informatics program (Link), but also teach in the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence MS programs (program info) as well as Computer Science PhD program (PhD info)

 

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 My Research Explained (plainly)

>> I recently wrote a blog post for the journal Nature about some of our research, check it out here: https://go.nature.com/3hCUqp0

 
Also gave a TEDx talk in Nashville a few years ago (some photos are here)
 
 
 
 
Selected PublicationsCasey Bennett

  • Jinjae Lee, Casey C. Bennett, Cedomir Stanojevic, Seongcheol Kim, Zachary Henkel, Kenna Baugus, Jennifer A. Piatt, Cindy Bethel, and Selma Sabanovic (2023) “Detecting cultural identity via robotic sensor data to understand differences during human-robot interaction." Advanced Robotics. 37(22): 1446-1459. HRI_Culture_Predict.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Say Young Kim, Benjamin Weiss, Young-Ho Bae, Jun Hyung Yun, Yejin Chae, Eunseo Yoon, Uijae Ryu, Hansae Cho, and Yesung Shin (2023) “Cognitive shifts in bilingual speakers affect speech interactions with artificial agents." International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. In Press. Effects_BilingualRobots.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Selma Sabanovic, Cedomir Stanojevic, Zachary Henkel, Seongcheol Kim, Jinjae Lee, Kenna Baugus, Jennifer A. Piatt, Janghoon Yu, Jiyeong Oh, Sawyer Collins, and Cindy Bethel (2023) “Enabling robotic pets to autonomously adapt their own behaviors to enhance therapeutic effects: A data-driven approach." IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human interactive Communication (RO-MAN). Busan, Korea. pp.1-8. RoboticPets_AdaptiveBehavior.pdf

  • Paula Castro Sanchez and Casey C. Bennett (2023) “Facial Expression Recognition via Transfer Learning in Cooperative Game Paradigms for Enhanced Social AI." Journal of Multimodal User Interfaces. 17(3): 1-5. TransferLearning_FER.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett and Minha Lee (2023) “Would people mumble rap to Alexa?" Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI '23). Eindhoven, The Netherlands. pp. 1-5. Mumble_Rap_CUI.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Young-Ho Bae, Jun Hyung Yun, Yejin Chae, Eunseo Yoon, Seeun Lee, Uijae Ryu, Say Young Kim, and Benjamin Weiss (2023) “Effects of cross-cultural language differences on social cognition during human-agent interaction in cooperative game environments." Computer Speech & Language. 81: 101521. Effects_LanguageDiffs_HRI.pdf

  • Ji-yeong Oh and Casey C. Bennett (2023) "The answer lies in user experience: Qualitative comparison of US and South Korean perceptions of in-home robotic pet interactions." Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’23). Stockholm, Sweden. pp. 1-4. HRI_QualAnalysis_USvsKorea.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Mindy K. Ross, EuGene Baek, Dohyeon Kim, and Alex D. Leow (2022) “Smartphone accelerometer data as a proxy for clinical data in modeling of bipolar disorder symptom trajectory." Nature NPJ Digital Medicine. 5: 181. Smartphone_BiAffect_AccelX.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Cedomir Stanojevic, Seongcheol Kim, Selma Sabanovic, Jinjae Lee, Jennifer A. Piatt, Janghoon Yu, and Jiyeong Oh (2022) “Comparison of in-home robotic companion pet use in South Korea and the United States: A case study." 9th IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics & Biomechatronics (BIOROB). Seoul, Korea. pp.1-7. Comparison_RobotPetUse_USvsKorea.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Mindy K. Ross, EuGene Baek, Dohyeon Kim, and Alex D. Leow (2022) “Predicting clinically relevant changes in bipolar disorder outside the clinic walls based on pervasive technology interactions via smartphone typing dynamics.” Pervasive and Mobile Computing. 83: 101598. PredictingBipolar_TechInteractions.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett and Benjamin Weiss (2022) “Purposeful failures as a form of culturally-appropriate intelligent disobedience during human-robot social interaction.” RAD-AI Workshop of the 21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2022). Auckland, New Zealand. pp.1-3. CrossCultural_Robotics_Failures.pdf

  • Cedomir Stanojevic, Casey C. Bennett, Selma Sabanovic, Jennifer A. Piatt, Seongcheol Kim, and Jinjae Lee (2022) “Utilization of EMA and the Transtheoretical model of behavior change to prevent relapse during long-term socially assistive robot based interventions.”  Workshop on Longitudinal Social Impacts of HRI over Long-Term Deployments at the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (LSI-HRI). Sapporo, Japan. PreventingRelapse_SARs.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Benjamin Weiss, JaeYoung Suh, Eunseo Yoon, Jihong Jeong, and Yejin Chae (2022) “Exploring data-driven components of socially intelligent AI through cooperative game paradigms.” Multimodal Technologies & Interaction. 6(6): 16. Exploring_Components_SocialAI.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Cedomir Stanojevic, Selma Sabanovic, Jennifer A. Piatt, and Seongcheol Kim (2021) “When no one is watching: Ecological momentary assessment to understand situated social robot use in healthcare.” ACM International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI). Tokyo, Japan. pp.245-251. EMA_SocialRobotUse.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett (2021) “Evoking an intentional stance during human-agent social interaction: Appearances can be deceiving.” IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human interactive Communication (RO-MAN).  Vancouver, Canada. pp.362-368. EvokeIntentionality_HRI.pdf

  • JaeYoung Suh, Casey C. Bennett, Benjamin Weiss, Eunseo Yoon, Jihong Jeong, and Yejin Chae (2021) "Development of speech dialogue systems for Social AI in cooperative game environments.” IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP). Jeju, Korea. In Press. SpeechDialogueSystem_SocialAI.pdf

  • Claudia Vesel et al. (2020) "Effects of mood and aging on keystroke dynamics metadata and their diurnal patterns in a large open-science sample: A BiAffect iOS study." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 27(7): 1007-1018.  

  • Natasha Randall, Casey C. Bennett, Selma Sabanovic, Shinichi Nagata, Lori Eldridge, Sawyer Collins, and Jennifer A. Piatt (2019) "More than just friends: in-home use and design recommendations for sensing socially assistive robots (SARs) by older adults with depression." Paladyn Journal of Behavioral Robotics. 10(1): 237-255. More_Than_Just_Friends.pdf

  • Raj, Rajendra K., Allen Parrish, John Impagliazzo, Carol J. Romanowski, Sherif G. Aly, Casey C. Bennett, Karen C. Davis, Andrew McGettrick, Teresa Susana Mendes Pereira, and Lovisa Sundin (2019) "An empirical approach to understanding data science and engineering education." Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE19). Aberdeen, Scotland. DataScience_Education.pdf

  • Casey C. Bennett, Selma Sabanovic, Jennifer A. Piatt, Shinichi Nagata, Lori Eldridge, and Natasha Randall (2017) "A robot a day keeps the blues away." IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI). pp.536-540.  ICHI_Robot_Depression.pdf

  • Casey Bennett and Thomas Doub (2015) “Expert Systems in Mental Healthcare: AI Applications in Decision Making and Consultation.” In: David D. Luxton (ed.) Artificial Intelligence in Mental Healthcare.  Elsevier Press.  27-51.  IBSN: 978-0-12-420248-1

  • Casey Bennett and Selma Sabanovic (2015) “The effects of culture and context on perceptions of robotic facial expressions.” Interaction Studies.  16(2): 272-302. HRI_CultureContext_Paper.pdf

  • Casey Bennett, Selma Sabanovic, Marlena Fraune, and Kate Shaw (2014) “Context congruency and robotic facial expressions: Do effects on human perceptions vary across culture?” IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human interactive Communication (RO-MAN).  Edinburgh, Scotland. pp. 465-470. Robot_Culture_Congruency.pdf

  • Selma Sabanovic, Casey Bennett, Jennifer Piatt, et al. (2014) “Participatory design of socially assistive robots for preventive patient-centered healthcare.” IEEE IROS Workshop on Assistive Robotics for Individuals with Disabilities. Chicago, IL, USA. PD_Robots_Healthcare.pdf

  • Casey Bennett and Selma Sabanovic (2014) “Deriving minimal features for human-like facial expressions in robotic faces.” International Journal of Social Robotics.  6(3): 367-381.  MiRAE_Paper_Final.pdf

  • Casey Bennett and Tom Doub (2014) “Temporal modeling in clinical artificial intelligence, decision-making, and cognitive computing: Empirical exploration of practical challenges.”  Proceedings of the 3rd SIAM Workshop on Data Mining for Medicine and Healthcare (DMMH). Philadelphia, PA, USA.  TemporalModeling_in_Healthcare.pdf

  • Selma Sabanovic, Casey Bennett, and Hee Rin Lee (2014) “Towards culturally robust robots: A critical social perspective on robotics and culture.”  Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Workshop on Culture-Aware Robotics (CARS). Bielefeld, Germany. Culturally_Robust_Robotics.pdf

  • Selma Sabanovic, Casey Bennett, Wan-Ling Chang, and Lesa Huber (2013) "PARO robot affects diverse interaction modalities in group sensory therapy for older adults with dementia."  Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR).  Seattle, Washington.  pp. 1-6.  PMID: 24187245  Paro_InteractionModalities.pdf

  • Casey Bennett and Kris Hauser (2013) “Artificial intelligence framework for simulating clinical decision-making: A Markov decision process approach.” Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 57(1): 9-19.  PMID: 23287490  AI_ClinicalDecisionMaking.pdf

  • Casey Bennett (2012) “Utilizing RxNorm to support practical computing applications: Capturing medication history in live electronic health records.”  Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 45: 634-641.  PMID: 22426081  RxNorm_CapturingRxHistory.pdf

  • Casey Bennett, Tom Doub, and Rebecca Selove (2012) “EHRs connect research and practice: Where predictive modeling, artificial intelligence, and clinical decision support intersect.”  Health Policy and Technology.  1(2): 105-114.  HLPT11.pdf

  • Casey Bennett, Tom Doub, April Bragg, et al. (2011) “Data mining session-based patient reported outcomes (PROs) in a mental health setting: Toward data-driven clinical decision support and personalized treatment." Proceedings of the IEEE Health Informatics and Systems Biology Conference. 229-236.  DataMining_PROs.pdf

  • Casey Bennett (2011) “Clinical productivity system: A decision support model.”  International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. 60(3): 311-319.  Clinical_Productivity.pdf

  • Casey Bennett and Tom Doub (2010) “Data mining and electronic health records: Selecting optimal clinical treatments in practice.”  Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Data Mining. 313-318.  DMIN_Final.pdf

  • Casey Bennett and Frederika Kaestle (2010) “Investigation of ancient DNA from western Siberia and the Sargat culture.” Human Biology. 82(2): 143-156.  PMID: 20649397

  • Casey Bennett and Frederika Kaestle (2006).  “A reanalysis of Eurasian population history: Ancient DNA evidence of population affinities.” Human Biology 78: 413-440. PMID: 17278619

 
 
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Content copyright . Casey Bennett. All rights reserved.

Facial Expression Recognition via Transfer Learning in Cooperative Game Paradigms for Enhanced Social AI