News

Congratulations to Dr. Nibraas Khan on the successful defense of his dissertation on Monday, July 27th! Dr. Khan’s work developed a general framework that integrates wearable sensing with explainable AI, with applications spanning both healthcare and sports. His research focused on analyzing real-world, ecologically valid data collected outside the… Read More

We are excited to congratulate Dr. Falk on the successful defense of her dissertation, “An Affective Graph Rewriting-Based Multimodal Dialogue Framework for Designing Job Interview Training Simulations with Applications for Autistic Individuals,” in March. Dr. Falk was formally hooded by Dr. Sarkar during the May commencement celebrations,… Read More

We are proud to announce the recent publication and conference presentation of a new work, “Graph-Based Real-Time Dialogue Adaptation for Personalized Virtual Job Interview Training”, led by Deeksha Adiani. Deeksha presented this work at the International Conference on Graph Transformation (ICGT) 2025 in Koblenz, Germany. This research tackles a… Read More

Congratulations to Miroslava Migovich for passing her PhD defense last month!! The title of her dissertation is “Naturalistic and Engaging Human-Robot Interactions through Affective Computing with Application to Apathy for Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment”. Dr. Migovich’s dissertation presented the development of NIRVANA, a novel socially assistive robot-VR… Read More

RASL’s driving simulator research was featured on News Channel 5. Check out the segment below! https://www.newschannel5.com/news/new-vanderbilt-driving-program-helps-people-with-autism-learn-to-drive-without-being-on-the-road AI-VTSBS NSF CIVIC Innovation Simulator for Individualized and Adaptive Driving (SIAD)… Read More

Vanderbilt researchers, led by Professor Nilanjan Sarkar, have received a $900,000 National Science Foundation grant to explore AI-driven solutions aimed at enhancing communication between neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals. The project, supported by NSF’s Research on Innovative Technologies for Enhanced Learning (RITEL) program, focuses on addressing the communication barriers, known as… Read More

We’re thrilled to have presented our recent work, “Design and Real-World Data Adaptation of Fuzzy Logic for Naturalistic Feedback from a Social Robot in a SAR-VR System for Apathy Intervention in Older Adults”, led by Miroslava Kennedy at the CONNECT Workshop @ 24th ACM International Conference on… Read More

RASL’s project RAPID was featured in VUMC News this week! This initiative, supported by a $1.1 million National Science Foundation grant, involves Vanderbilt University and North Carolina State University researchers developing advanced wearable technology to anticipate problem behaviors in children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The project includes a specially… Read More

Congratulations to the senior design team for receiving a Senior Design Award for their work on Thermal Feedback in AR! This project was mentored by the RASL lab, under the guidance of Alexandra Watkins. Read More

Congratulations to Dr. Zhang on the successful defense of her dissertation! She is the 25th Ph.D. graduate of the RASL Lab!… Read More