While teaching textiles and fashion design studio classes at Savannah College of Art & Design, Zeagler realized his true passion lies in bridging the gap between the disciplines of Wearable design and Human-Centered Computing. A diverse background in fashion, industrial design, and textiles drive his research on electronic textiles and on-body interfaces with the Contextual Computing Group of the GVU center of Georgia Tech. As a Principal Research Scientist for the Georgia Tech Interactive Media Technology Center and Instructor for the Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design he teaches courses on Wearable Product Design and an ID section of Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing (MUC).  Zeagler enjoys working with corporations such as HP/Palm and Google to bring real-world experience into the classroom. He recently acquired a NASA Georgia Space Consortium grant to fund MUC student projects on wearable computing for space—a wonderful opportunity for undergraduate students. He is also a member of the NASA Wearable Technology Cluster a group of scientists and academics working together to give advice to those in NASA working on wearable computing or electronic textile projects. A deep understanding of the garment production process fosters innovation in his research. Zeagler’s company Pecan Pie Couture hand-dyed, embroidered, and screen-printed textiles and garments. Building upon that skillset, his recent research led to the creation of the Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book (ESwatchBook) in collaboration with Thad Starner. The ESwatchBook is designed to help facilitate discussions between the skill and craft-based design disciplines (.i.e. fashion) and more technical disciplines (.i.e. computer science). To put the ESwatchBook’s capabilities to the test, he developed a series of workshops at multiple colleges with the purpose of bringing together designers with engineers/technology specialists. The workshops were funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant, which he co-authored. Zeagler’s most recent endeavor FIDO: Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations is an exploration into using wearable electronics to enhance interactions between service dogs and their handler/owners.

Ellen Zegura, Ph.D., is a Professor and the Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications at the School of Computer Science, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Zegura’s research concerns the development of wide-area (Internet) networking services and mobile wireless networking.  Wide-area services are utilized by applications that are distributed across multiple administrative domains (e.g., web, file sharing, multi-media distribution). Her focus is on services implemented both at the network layer, as part of network infrastructure, and at the application layer.  In the context of mobile wireless networking, she is interested in challenged environments where traditional ad-hoc and infrastructure-based networking approaches fail. These environments have been termed Disruption Tolerant Networks.  She received a Bachelor's in Computer Science (1987) and Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering (1987), a Master's in Computer Science (1990) and the D.Sc. in Computer Science (1993) all from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Since 1993, she has been a faculty member at Georgia Tech. She was an Assistant Dean in charge of Space and Facilities Planning from Fall 2000 to January 2003. She served as Interim Dean of the College for six months in 2002. She was Associate Dean responsible for Research and Graduate Programs from 2003-2005, and served as the first Chair of the School of Computer Science from 2005-2012.  Zegura is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM.

Gil Weinberg is a professor and the founding director of Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, where he leads the Robotic Musicianship group. His research focuses on developing artificial creativity and musical expression for robots and augmented humans. Among his projects are a marimba playing robotic musician called Shimon that uses machine learning for Jazz improvisation, and a prosthetic robotic arm for amputees that restores and enhances human drumming abilities. Weinberg presented his work worldwide in venues such as The Kennedy Center, The World Economic Forum, Ars Electronica, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum, SIGGRAPH, TED-Ed, DLD and others. His music was performed with Orchestras such as Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the National Irish Symphony Orchestra, and the Scottish BBC Symphony while his research has been disseminated through numerous journal articles and patents. Dr. Weinberg received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and his BA from the interdisciplinary program for fostering excellence in Tel Aviv University.

Thad Starner is a Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Interactive Computing. Thad was perhaps the first to integrate a wearable computer into his everyday life as an intelligent personal assistant. Starner's work as a Ph.D. student would help found the field of Wearable Computing. His group's prototypes and patents on mobile MP3 players, mobile instant messaging and e-mail, gesture-based interfaces, and mobile context-based search foreshadowed now commonplace devices and services. Thad has authored over 100 scientific publications with over 100 co-authors on mobile Human Computer Interaction (HCI), pattern discovery, human power generation for mobile devices, and gesture recognition, and he is a founder and current co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Wearable Information Systems. His work is discussed in public forums such as CNN, NPR, the BBC, CBS's 60 Minutes, The New York Times, Nikkei Science, The London Independent, The Bangkok Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Agata Rozga is a psychologist with expertise and 13 years of experience forging a new interdisciplinary research area at the intersection of computing and psychology called computational behavioral science. The research vision is to transform the measurement, analysis, and understanding of health-related behaviors by leveraging advances in sensing, wearable and mobile technologies, and computational analysis methods. The ultimate goal is to develop tools that can lead to better detection, monitoring, and treatment of a variety of chronic health conditions.

One key area Dr. Rozga’s research has focused on is understanding early trajectories and predictors of social communication in children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In her most recent work, she is applying novel computational methods to longitudinal measures of communication behavior to understand different pathways to language in autism, including failure to acquire spoken language by age 5. Dr. Rozga’s research has recently expanded to include a focus on Mild Cognitive Impairment, with an eye toward developing novel AI-based systems to help monitor cognitive and functional decline in everyday activities, to deliver appropriate in-situ supports, and to support care networks.

Dr. Rozga serves as the Director of Translational Research for the Georgia Tech-led NSF National AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING), and as the Programs and Research Director for the Technology Core of the Cognitive Empowerment Program at the Emory Brain-Health Center. She was previously the Head of Product for Diligent Robotics, https://www.diligentrobots.com/.

Mark Riedl is an Associate Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and director of the Entertainment Intelligence Lab. Mark's research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, and storytelling. The principle research question Mark addresses through his research is: how can intelligent computational systems reason about and autonomously create engaging experiences for users of virtual worlds and computer games. Mark's primary research contributions are in the area of artificial intelligence approaches to automated story generation and interactive storytelling for entertainment, education, and training. Narrative is a cognitive tool used by humans for communication and sense-making. The goal of my narrative intelligence research is to discover new computational algorithms and models that can facilitate the development of intelligent computer systems that can reason about narrative in order to be better communicators, entertainers, and educators. Additionally, Mark has explored the following research topics: virtual cinematography in 3D virtual worlds; player modeling; procedural generation of computer game content; computational creativity; human creativity support; intelligent virtual characters; mixed-initiative problem solving; and discourse generation. Mark earned a Ph.D. degree in 2004 from North Carolina State University. From 2004-2007, Mark was a Research Scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies where he researched and developed interactive, narrative-based training systems. Mark joined the Georgia Tech College of Computing in 2007 where he continues to study artificial intelligence approaches to story generation, interactive narratives, and adaptive computer games. His research is supported by the NSF, DARPA, the U.S. Army, Google, and Disney. Mark was the recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award and an NSF CAREER Award.