People

Faculty, current doctoral students, and alumni of the VISAGE Laboratory.

Faculty

Dr. Christine Lisetti

Director, Virtual Intelligent Social AGEnts (VISAGE) Laboratory

Associate Professor, Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences

email: lisetti(at)cs.fiu.edu

homepage URL: http://www.cis.fiu.edu/~lisetti

Christine Lisetti's long-term research goal is to create digital and engaging socially interactive agents that can interact with humans, via expressive multi-modalities humans can naturally understand, including speech, facial expressions, and body gestures, to help teachers, trainers, healthcare and medical providers, and regular people in contexts involving socio-emotional content.

She is interested in design principles for ethical digital supportive health coaches and assistants that can virtually extend human health practitioners for people's benefit, health, and wellbeing. She is also interested in human-centered design for cyberlearning with serious educational games for learning social skills, virtual advisors, and related areas.

Current Students

Doctoral Students

Shamim Golafshan

Shamim Golafshan holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran, and an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Isfahan. She is pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Florida International University. Her research interests include machine learning, deep learning, virtual reality, and human-computer interaction for healthcare and medical domains.

Trinity Socorro

Trinity Socorro holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Information Technology from Florida International University, where she also worked in I.T. support. She is a member of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society and is pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Florida International University. Her research interests include affective computing and human-computer interaction.

VISAGE Lab Alumni

Post Doctoral Students

Carlos Largacha Martinez, 2020-2021 Fullbright Fellow, Research Professor in Management, University of the Andes, Columbia.
Mihai Polceanu, 2015-2016. PhD in Computer Science, Ecole nationale superieure des telecommunications de Bretagne (ENSTB), France.
Brian R. Duffy, 2005-2006. PhD in Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland.

Ph.D. Students

Alban Delamarre

PhD in Computer Science, Florida International University, 2020. Upon graduation, Dr. Delamarre joined the Dan Marino Foundation to continue working on designing, developing, and evaluating virtual reality training software that helps people practice social skills, particularly for people with autism spectrum disorder.

Dr. Reza Amini

PhD in Computer Science, Florida International University, 2015. Upon graduation, Dr. Amini became Senior Research Software Engineer at iPSoft Corporation, continuing work related to constructing 3D models of non-verbal behavior to create expressive avatars.

Dr. Ugan Yasavur

PhD in Computer Science, Florida International University, 2014. Upon graduation, Dr. Yasavur became a Senior Research Software Engineer at iPSoft Corporation, continuing work related to dialog management systems for flowing conversations with intelligent avatars.

Dr. Olivier Villon

Doctorat d'Etat en Informatique, Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, 2007.

Fatma Nasoz

PhD in Computer Science, 2004. Upon graduation, Dr. Nasoz became Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics, University of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Master Students

Jonathan Fields, 2025.
Stephanie Lunn, 2020.
Guido Ruiz, 2016.
Shakil Md Ahamed, 2014.
Tessa Verhoef, 2008.
Damien Birraux, 2007.
Eric Bahini, 2007.
Charles Lecoq, 2007.
Agnes Abastado, 2007.
Mikko Lethonen, 2006.
Marco Paleari, 2006.
Guillaume Bastard, 2005.
Andreas Marpaung, 2004.
Russ Tardif, 2003.

Undergraduate Students

Geeticka Chauhan, 2015, upon graduation accepted in MIT PhD program.
Stephanie Lunn, 2014, funded by NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate Students grant; then joined the lab as a master's student.
Daniel Rivero, 2015, funded by NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate Students grant.
Shadeh Ferris-Francis, 2014, then joined the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Santiago Bolivar, 2013, funded by NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate Students grant, joined Dan Marino Foundation.
Guido Ruiz, 2013, then joined the lab as a master's graduate student.
Jorge Travieso, funded by a grant from Numedeon-NSF, 2013, then joined iPSoft as software engineer.
Karen Fernandez Silva, McNair Program Fellow, 2012, accepted in the computer science graduate program on human-computer interaction at the University of Michigan.
Claudia de Leon, funded by grant from Vcom3D-NSF throughout 2011; then joined Ultimate Software as a Software Test Engineer.
Gabriel Lizarraga, funded by Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Distributed Mentoring Program; then accepted in FIU SCIS Ph.D program, 2008.
Karen Perez, funded by grant from Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Distributed Mentoring Program, 2008.
Sarah Brown, funded by Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Distributed Mentoring Program, 2003; received Grace Hopper Scholarship; then accepted as CS Graduate Student, Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Eric Baumer, received UC Irvine Dean's Scholarship; then accepted as Ph.D. student, University of California Irvine, 2002.

Source: VISAGE Laboratory people