Vision

Welcome to the website of echolab at Virginia Tech. Our mission is to understand and create ways to foster empathic interaction among people using computational systems. Our research is based on the framework of empathy depicted below and centered around three themes: computational tools for perspective sharing for empathizers, computer as an expressive medium for targets (or empathizees), and facilitation of empathic communication for both groups. 

To Prospective Students

echolab is always looking for Ph.D. students who are interested in creating novel interactive systems. We are also looking for exceptional undergraduate students and master students to work with. Please apply to CS@VT.

If you are in Virginia Tech already and would like to do research in Echolab, please fill out the following survey and I will respond. https://forms.gle/gzM3fb5iK9Jt1SPLA

Recent News

  • (2023/8) Two posters were accepted to ACM UIST 2023
    • TaleMate: Collaborating with Voice Agents for Parent-Child Joint Reading Experiences
    • Context-Aware Sit-Stand Desk for Promoting Healthy and Productive Behaviors
  • (2023/7) One paper was accepted to VL/HCC 2023
    • Octave: an End-user Programming Environment for Analysis of Spatiotemporal Data for Construction Students
  • (2023/6) Congratulations to Md Momen Bhuiyan for successfully defending the dissertation.
  • (2023/6) Congratulations to Md Momen Bhuiyan for getting a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. Super excited about his future research
  • (2023/5) Congrats to Marx Boyuan Wang for successfully defending the Master’s thesis. He will continue HCI research at iSchool@UW.
  • (2023/5) Sang Won Lee gave a seminar as part of NAVER Tech Talk series at NAVER AI Lab, Korea.
  • (2023/5) Congrats to Danny Manesh, who won the GTA Award 2023
  • (2023/5) Congrats to Teresa Thomas, who won the David Heilman Research Award 2023
  • (2023/4) Congrats to Md Momen Bhuiyan, who won third place in Togersen Awards 2023
  • (2023/3) One work-in-progress (poster) and one music performance were accepted to NIME 2023.
  • (2023/1) Two papers were accepted to CHI 2023.
  • (2022/12) Sang Won Lee was awarded OERC Research Award as a Co-PI (PI Prof. Sol Lim).
  • (2022/12) IdeaSpace received the Best Poster award at ACM SUI 2022 (link)!
  • (2022/12) Sang Won Lee was awarded Google Award for Inclusion Research as a Co-PI (PI Prof. Chris Brown) (link)
  • (2022/11) A few Echolab folks (Sang, Donghan, Daniel, and Marx) will be traveling to UIST 2022.
  • (2022/10) Sang Won Lee gave seminars at the University of Maryland HCIL Brown Bag Speaker Series (UMD)(video) and UMBC Interactive Systems Research Center.
  • (2022/10) One paper (ARCritique) and a poster (IdeaSpace) was accepted to ACM SUI 2022
  • (2022/08) Taskscape and iThem posters were accepted to UIST 2022.
  • (2022/08) Scrapbook paper was accepted to UIST 2022.
  • (2022/06) Sang and Dash (echolab alumni) attended ACM Creativity and Cognition 2022 in Venice, Italy.
  • (2022/06) Sang gave two seminars at DGIST and Kwangwoon University.
  • (2022/05) Sang and all Ph.D. students in echolab (physically) attended CHI 2022 at NOLA. See the pictures here!
  • (2022/04) Our undergraduate researchers (Andy, Drew, Hennah, Rodney) participated in VTURCS and won 1st place (Drew) and 3rd places (Andy, Rodney)!
  • (2022/04) Watch-me-write paper was accepted to ACM C&C 2022.
  • (2022/03) OtherTube received a Best Paper Honorable Mention Award CHI 2022.
  • (2022/03) Molly Hickman received the Outstanding Thesis award during Graduate Education Week.
  • (2022/02) A CHI workshop paper was accepted to HCDS@CHI 2022.
  • (2022/02) Sang Won Lee was invited to give a seminar to share his research experience at the HCI Korea conference.
  • (2022/02) Sang Won Lee gave a talk at the alumni event. (video)
  • (2022/01) Sang Won Lee participated as a program committee member in ACM Creativity and Cognition 2022
  • (2021/11) OtherTube paper was accepted to CHI 2022.
  • (2021/11) Sang Won Lee participated as a Technology co-chair in HCOMP 2021.
  • (2021/10) Echolab and PIE lab at UCI had a lab speed dating as part of the CSCW social event! Here are some photos (1, 2).
  • (2021/10) Huge presence of Echolab in CSCW 2021, presenting four papers. Sang also participated in MoSafely Workshop and chaired a Voice and Speech session.
  • (2021/10) Sang Won Lee participated as an Online Experience Chair in ISMAR 2021.
  • (2021/08) Sang Won Lee served as an associate chair in the specific applications subcommittee in CHI 2022.
  • (2021/08) Nathaniel Llorens successfully defended his Master’s thesis.
  • (2021/08) Sang gave a seminar at Seoul National University and HCI@KAIST (video)
  • (2021/08) Two (more) papers were accepted to ACM CSCW 2021.
  • (2021/08) Sang Won Lee was awarded RETTL, NSF program grant as a PI. (link)
  • (2021/06) Sang Won Lee was awarded IUSE, NSF program grant as a Co-PI. (link)
  • (2021/06) Sang Won Lee participated as a Technology Chair in ICAD 2021
  • (2021/05) A journal article was accepted to Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2021.
  • (2021/05) A conference paper was accepted to HFES 2021.
  • (2021/05) Tam Phan successfully defended his Master’s thesis.
  • (2021/03) Three CHI workshop papers were accepted to CHI 2021.
  • (2021/02) Sang Won Lee gave a seminar in IST Research Seminar series at George Mason University and spoke about computer-mediated empathy
  • (2021/01) One poster (Yuan Li from the 3DUI group) was accepted to IEEE VR 2021.
  • (2021/01) New Year has begun, and a new lab website has been launched!
  • (2021/03) An abstract was accepted to AFHE 2021.
  • (2020/12) Two papers were accepted to ACM CSCW 2021.
  • (2020/12) One paper was accepted to ACM CHI 2021.
  • (2020/12) Check out the virtual showcase of Creative Computing Studio (CS 4644) wordpress.cs.vt.edu/ccs2020f/
  • (2020/11) Sang gave a seminar and spoke about ongoing research at his lab and how it relates to empathy in Social Informatics group. (video)
  • (2020/10) 11 echolab members attended ACM UIST/CSCW 2020
  • (2020/09) 4 posters were accepted to ACM UIST/CSCW 2010
  • (2020/08) Viral Pasad successfully defended his Master’s thesis.
  • (2020/08) VL/HCC 2020 paper received the best short paper award.

Research Highlights

(ongoing) Facilitating socially constructed learning through a shared, mobile-based virtual reality platform in informal learning settings

TBD

TBD