Ryan Louie

News

I have started my postdoc at Stanford CS in Sept 2023, in the area of AI/NLP for Mental Health.

✨ In late August 2023, I defended my PhD thesis! ✨ The thesis was titled "Human-AI Interface Layers: Enhancing Communication of Intent for AI-Assisted Creative Pursuits and Social Experiences" [PDF] [Talk Recording]

I was also awarded a Google PhD Fellowship in Human Computer Interaction in 2022! Northwestern wrote a nice article featuring me as a fellowship recipient.

About me

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stanford University CS, where I collaborate with Diyi Yang and Emma Brunskill to advance AIs potential to assist in Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Mental health providers--from trained therapists to volunteer peer supporters--remain crucial, and we hypothesize that AI-assisted training and practice can improve their efficacy, confidence, and growth. Human-AI collaboration and interfaces for effectively imbuing AIs with domain-specific and personal-knowledge of this area will be important.

I received my PhD from Northwestern's Technology and Social Behavior program, where I worked closely with Prof. Haoqi Zhang and Darren Gergle. My research aimed to enhance people's communication of intent and goals when using AI systems to assist in personally-meaningful pursuits, such as creating music compositions and sharing meaningful social experiences at distance. To do this, I advanced Human-AI Interface Layers, a technology sitting on top of existing AIs that help people in communicating their intent and expectations to their AI assistants and collaborators.