Abstract: AJ Brush's research currently focuses on using sensing, inference, and prediction to enable new experiences in the home and on mobile devices. In this talk she gives an overview of research with collaborators in the areas of home automation and continuous mobile sensing. While visions of smart homes have long caught the attention of researchers and effort has been put toward enabling home automation these technology have not yet been widely adopted despite being available for over three decades. Our research in this area includes studying the current use of technology and automation in homes, building the HomeOS system to provide centralized holistic control of devices and applications used in the home, and developing PreHeat, a home-heating system to improve the efficiency of home heating and save money and energy. She also turns to sensing on the phone and present the prototypes that she and her collaborators have built to explore applications enabled by continuous sensing. For example, to provide memory assistance (Where did I leave my car? What was that person’s name?) and for context sharing (Is now a good time to call him or is he driving?). In addition to presenting previous research, she also describes ongoing projects in both areas. Bio: A.J. Bernheim Brush is a senior researcher at MSR. Her research area is Human-Computer Interaction with a focus on Ubiquitous Computing and Computer Supported Collaboration (CSCW). A.J. received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington and graduated Summa cum Laude from Williams College. A.J. is most well known for her research on technologies for families and her expertise conducting field studies of technology. She currently focuses on using sensing, inference, and prediction to enable new experiences on mobile devices and in the home. A.J. was honored to receive a Borg Early Career Award in 2010. A.J. serves on the UbiComp-Pervasive Conference Steering Committee and the CRA-W board. She served as ACM SIGCHI VP for Membership and Communications from 2006 – 2009 and as the program co-chair for the Pervasive 2009 conference. A.J. has also served on Program Committees for many conferences including UbiComp, Pervasive, CHI, and CSCW.
