Children are known to be curious and persistent question-askers. The pervasiveness of voice interfaces represents an opportunity for children who are still learning to read and write to independently search the Internet by directing questions at conversational agents such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and the Google Assistant. However, little...
Human communication has become increasingly reliant on systems made and managed by large technology companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, and Meta (formerly Facebook). These systems offer people many benefits, but they also present new challenges for society. In recent years, researchers, lawmakers, and journalists have suggested that large technology companies...
Task-oriented conversational systems are becoming increasingly popular, as shown by the rise of conversational recommendation systems across multiple platforms (e.g., Google Home, Alexa, and Siri) and domains (e.g., local establishments, e-commerce, books, music, and movies). However, users are still largely limited in what preferences they can express and how, as...
Task-oriented conversational systems are becoming increasingly popular, as shown by the rise of conversational recommendation systems across multiple platforms (e.g., Google Home, Alexa, and Siri) and domains (e.g., local establishments, e-commerce, books, music, and movies). However, users are still largely limited in what preferences they can express and how, as...
Wearable visual systems, such as ego-centric wearable cameras, have failed to integrate into everyday life. We have witnessed the abandonment of wearable visual systems as consumer devices (e.g., Google Glass) and as research tools (e.g., SenseCam). While it is natural for some technologies to die out, visual wearable systems are...
Search engines and social media are two ubiquitous modes of accessing Web information, and they dictate what information people view, influencing their thoughts and beliefs and potentially shaping their opinions about news and facts. Network effects propagate the beliefs, often magnified, disseminating information rapidly and leaving little time for fact...
With the rapid growth of demand for data center services, the energy and water use of data centers has become a critical concern in the contexts of energy use, climate change, and freshwater conservation. Therefore, understanding, quantifying, and optimizing the use of energy and water resources in data centers has...
This thesis contributes in two ways. First it describes a new framework for the systematic design of collective behaviors and solves a key stability issue under this design framework. In this thesis we apply this framework to solve three tasks in the swarm robotics field: connectivity maintenance, formation control and...
The Operating System (OS) kernel is a key component of modern computing infrastructure, yet it is prone to numerous vulnerabilities, many of which cause memory corruptions that can be exploited by attackers to perform malicious activities. While various techniques have been introduced to secure the Linux kernel, it still constantly...
In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, we have witnessed a surge of public interest in and discussion around racial reckoning. Universities in the United States and across the globe are grappling with their historical associations with transatlantic and chattel slavery. This dissertation takes up the question of...