CURRY I. GUINN

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Duke University, 1994.

M.S., Duke University, 1990.

B.S., Summa Cum Laude, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988

EXPERIENCE

Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Professor at UNC-Wilmington (2004-present) in the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Teaching and developing curriculum for undergraduate computer science education with an emphasis on innovative methodologies and educational technologies. Leading research in natural language processing, virtual humans, intelligent user interfaces, human-computer interaction, and philosophy of artificial intelligence.

Principal Investigator, Interactive Virtual Humans, RTI International

Principal Investigator at Research Triangle Institute (1995-2004) on a National Science Foundation Grant leading the development of interactive virtual humans with emotions that affect their body and facial gestures, decision-making, and language generation. Program leader of RTI’s AVAtalk® technology creating responsive, individual virtual humans (www.rvht.net). In an AVAtalk-enabled application, users carry on spoken conversation with a simulated person (an avatar) and see and hear realistic responses from the avatar.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, duke University

Instructor and advisor in the Department of Computer Science at Duke University (1994-2004). Teaching includes two classes in Methodologies of Artificial Intelligence, a senior-level course, and Mind and Computers, a class in Duke’s exceptional Honors Program for incoming students. I have sponsored graduate students through DoD and NSF contracts and worked closely with graduate students as committee member and co-author of research publications.

Spoken Natural Language Dialog Systems

Research Engineer at Research Triangle Institute leading the development and integration of natural language dialogue into computer-based training and operational environments. Funded primarily by STRICOM’s ACT II Program, I led the development of a system that allows a trainee or mechanic to talk to a computerized assistant in a virtual reality environment during the diagnosis and repair of equipment. These systems have been implemented on a wide variety of platforms include off-the-shelf personal computers, wearable computers, hand-held computers, and high-end workstations. Specific project domains include maintenance of the M1A1 Abrams tank, orientation training for ship engineering officers, flight training, and point-of-sale tasks.

Human-Computer Collaboration

As Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke University, working on NSF and ONR- funded research on natural language dialogue in multimedia environments. Created and implemented a computational model of collaborative problem-solving where individual participants communicate by natural language dialogue. This work focuses on determining what dialogue behaviors are necessary for completeness, soundness, and efficiency in cooperative problem-solving. Particular emphasis is placed on dialogue solutions to conflict resolution. The collaborative model synthesizes many AI modules: planning, user models, plan recognition, negotiation, variable initiative, and dialogue. This work serves as a test bed for ongoing and future research in human computer collaboration at Duke University.

Multimedia Tools for Education

Conducted research with Alan Biermann in the design of multimedia applications for teaching the relationships among fundamental concepts in Computer Science: machine architecture, assembly language, higher-level languages, and compilation. Worked on a team that created software that was used in Duke University Computer Science courses and made freely available over the internet.

Text Abstraction

Co-adviser to Amit Bagga (PhD 1998) and Joyce Chai (PhD 1998) on a large corpus text abstraction project at Duke University that investigates the automatic extraction of semantic network knowledge representations of free-form English text in an electronic news domain.

Argumentation Theory

Designed and implemented a model of argumentation that exploits the relationship between high-level discourse phenomena and low-level syntactic phenomena in its processing of natural language utterances.

Expert Systems

Conducted research in conjunction with IBM on developing sales advisory systems.

Semantic Networks

Conducted research with Terry Nutter (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) in semantic networks. Ported a semantic network and deduction system (SNePS) to a Symbolics machine.

HONORS

“Circle of Champions” award from RTI for innovative marketing excellence.

James B. Duke Fellow, Duke University.

Academic All-American.

Golden Key National Honor Society.

Phi Beta Kappa.

Upsilon Pi Epsilon, Computer Science Honor Society.

Outstanding Lower Division Student, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

and State University.

Phi Eta Sigma.

Bronze Citizenship Award, Awarded by the Sons of the American Revolution.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

American Association of Artificial Intelligence, member.

The Association for Computational Linguistics, member.

Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGdial), member.

Association for Computing Machinery, member.

GRANTS

Natural Language Processing for Longitudinal Exposure Data, RTI International, Original Source of Funds: Environmental Protection Agency, August 1, 2004 – March 31, 2008, $29,586.00.

Responsive Virtual Human Technology Research, National Science Foundation, #EIA-0121211, September 2001-August 2004, $ 2,042,547.

PUBLICATIONS

Accessibility and acceptance of responsive virtual human technology as a survey interviewer training tool, with M. Link, P. Armsby, and R. Hubal, Computers in Human Behavior 759, 2004.

An Evaluation of Virtual Human Technology in Informational Kiosks, with R. Hubal, Proceedings of International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI ’04), State College, PA, 2004.

A Synthetic Character Application for Informed Consent, W. Visscher, R Hubal, , E. Studer, and D. Sparrow, AAAI Fall Symposium on Dialogue Systems for Health Communication, Washington, DC, 2004.

Psychologically plausible models that drive synthetic character behavior with applications for assessing interaction skills, with R. Hubal, P. Kizakevich, G. Frank, Workshop on Cognitive Systems: Human Cognitive Models in System Design, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2004.

Usability and Acceptability Studies of Conversational Virtual Human Technology, with R. Hubal, G. Frank, H. Schwetzke, J. Zimmer, S. Backus, R. Deterding, M. Link, P. Armsby, R. Caspar, L. Flicker, W. Visscher, A. Meehan, and H. Zelon, 5^th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, Boston, MA, 2004.

Integrating a Crisis Stages Model into a Simulation for Training Law Enforcement Officers to Manage Encounters with the Mentally Ill, with R. Hubal, G. Frank, and R. Dupont, Architectures for Modeling Emotion: Cross-Disciplinary Foundations, Technical Report SS-04-02, pp. 68-69, 2004.

Accessibility and Acceptance of a Virtual Respondent-Based Interviewer Training Application, with

P. P. Armsby, M. W. Link, R. Hubal, L. Flicker, and R. A. Caspar, Survey and Statistical Computing IV. The Impact of Technology on the Survey Process, 2003.

Interactive Soft Skills Training using Responsive Virtual Human Technology, with R. Hubal, Proceedings of the Interactive Technologies Conference, Arlington, VA, 2003.

Extracting Emotional Information from the Text of Spoken Dialog, with R. Hubal, 9^th International Conference on User Modeling, Johnstown, PA, 2003.

Lessons learned in modeling schizophrenic and depressed responsive virtual humans for training,

with Hubal, R. and Frank, G., Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Miami, Florida, USA , 2003.

Virtual Simulated Patients for Bioterrorism Preparedness Training, with Paul N. Kizakevich, Linda Lux, and Steve Duncan, accepted for publication, Proceedings of the 11^th MMVR Conference, Newport Beach, California, 2003.

JUST-TALK: An Application of Responsive Virtual Human Technology, with Geoffrey Frank and Robert Hubal, accepted for publication, Proceedings of the 24th Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, 2002.

A Test of Responsive Virtual Human Technology as an Interviewer Skills Training Tool. With Link, M.W., Armsby, P. P., and Hubal, R. Proceedings of the 2002 Annual Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, St. Petersburg. 2002.

AVATALK Virtual Humans for Training with Computer Generated Forces. Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Computer Generated Forces. With Hubal, R.C., Frank, G.A.Institute for Simulation & Training: Orlando, FL, 2000.

The Virtual Standardized Patient–Simulated Patient-Practitioner Dialogue for Patient Interview Training. With Hubal, R.C. (1^st Author), Kizakevich, P.N., Merino, K.D., & West, S.L. In J.D. Westwood, H.M. Hoffman, G.T. Mogel, R.A. Robb, & D. Stredney (Eds.), Envisioning Healing: Interactive Technology and the Patient-Practitioner Dialogue. IOS Press: Amsterdam, 2000.

Evaluating Mixed-Initiative Dialog, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Volume 14, Number 5, pp. 21-23, 1999.

An Analysis of Initiative Selection in Collaborative Task-Oriented Discourse, User Modeling and User-adapted Interaction, Vol 8(3-4):255-314, 1998. Also published in Computational Models of Mixed-Initiative Interaction, editors, S. Haller, S. McRoy, and A. Kobsa, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 89-148, 1999.

Two Dimensional Generalization in Information Extraction, with Joyce Yue Chai, Alan W. Biermann, AAAI/IAAI, pp. 431-438, 1999.

Natural Language Processing in Virtual Reality, with R. Jorge Montoya, Modern Simulation and Training, pp. 44-55, June 1998.

Natural Language Processing in Virtual Reality Training Environments, with R. Jorge Montoya, in Proceedings of the 19^th Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, 1997.

Goal-Oriented Multimedia Dialogue with Variable Initiative, with Alan W. Biermann (1^st Author), Michael S. Fulkerson, Greg A. Keim, Zheng Liang, Douglas M. Melamed, Krishnan Rajagopalan, in International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, pp. 1-16, 1997.

Mechanisms for Mixed-Initiative Human-Computer Collaborative Discourse, in Proceedings of the 34^th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 1996.

Mechanisms for Dynamically Changing Initiative in Human-Computer Collaborative Discourse, in Proceedings of the 1996 Human Interaction with Complex Systems Symposium, 1996.

A Trainable System for the Extraction of Meaning from Text, with Amit Bagga, Joyce Chai, Alan Biermann, and Alan W. Hui, in Proceedings of CASCON ’95, 1995.

The Role of Computer-Computer Dialogues in Human-Computer Dialogue System Development, in Empirical Methods in Discourse Interpretation and Generation, Technical Report SS-95-06, The AAAI Press, 1995.

Maximally Efficient Dialogue Mode Algorithm, in Knowledge-Based Systems, 7(4):277-8, December, 1994.

A Computer Animated System for Demonstrating Hardware and Software Principles, with Alan Biermann (1st Author), Dietolf Ramm, David Pennock, Amr Fahmy, and Peter Wu, in Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Southeastern Small College Computing Conference, Greenville, South Carolina, November 1994.

Visualizing Computation: Full Color and Motion Demonstration of Computer Mechanisms, with Alan Biermann (1st Author), Dietolf Ramm, David Pennock, Amr Fahmy, and Peter Wu, in Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on College Teaching and Learning, Jacksonville, FL, April 1994.

Teaching a Hierarchical Model of Computation with Animation Software in the First Course, with Alan Biermann (1st Author), Amr F. Fahmy, David Pennock, Dietolf Ramm, and Peter Wu, in SIGSCE '94 Bulletin, 26(1):295-9, 1994.

A Computational Model of Dialogue Initiative in Collaborative Discourse, in Human- Computer Collaboration: Reconciling Theory, Synthesizing Practice, Technical Report FS-93-05, The AAAI Press, 1993.

Conflict Resolution in Collaborative Discourse, with Alan Biermann in Computational Models of Conflict Management in Cooperative Problem Solving, Workshop Proceedings from the 13th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Chambery, France, August 1993.

A Computational Model of Collaborative Discourse, with Alan Biermann in Collaborative Problem Solving: Theoretical Frameworks and Innovative Systems, Workshop Proceedings from AI-ED 93 World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 1993.

Efficient Collaborative Discourse: A Theory and its Implementation, with Alan Biermann (1st Author), D. Richard Hipp, and Ronnie Smith in ARPA Workshop on Human Language Technology, Princeton, NJ, March 1993.