Applied learning and real-world problem-solving at the Summer Faculty Research Showcase

For many, summer is a time to pursue passion projects. Maybe you picked up a cool new hobby, or exhausted your personal reading list; maybe you developed and executed your first graduate-level research project. For 23 graduate students at Khoury College of Computer Sciences, a summer filled with project design, user testing, and data analysis culminated with a presentation of their work at the Summer Faculty Research Showcase, held on August 18th.

The showcase featured 13 different research projects that the students conducted under the direction of Khoury faculty members across the network. Projects were diverse, ranging from the verification of neural networks to cybersickness and virtual reality to the automation of airplane inspections. Each group had five minutes to present their work, then received feedback from Greg Waters, the founder of Matrixspace, former CEO Integrated Device Technology, and himself an alumnus of Khoury’s MSCS program.

“The students were articulate, had well-formed presentations, and presented their ideas clearly and with conviction,” said Waters. “I think having a forum like this where people can bounce off ideas is just fantastic!”

The two projects highlighted here display some of the diversity and scope of the faculty summer research program; to read more about the other projects, consider checking out the Khoury Summer Faculty Research Showcase Program.

The Microaggression Games Project
For a team of three student researchers, the summer research initiative presented an opportunity to address social issues, specifically microaggressions, which are one of the most insidious forms of bias. The repeated, subtle violences accumulate to make their targets feel unwelcome and unsafe; however, specific instances are usually just minor enough that the target feels tentative about calling them out, while the incident flies completely under the radar to uninformed bystanders.

As part of her doctoral thesis, Northeastern assistant professor Alexandra To developed a game that enabled players to learn about, experience, and discuss a racial microaggression without having to disclose personal experiences. The game was met with positive reception, and she decided to open the project up to graduate students interested in designing educational games to raise awareness about other types of microaggressions.

Professor To worked with three students this summer: Heng Su, a rising second-year pursuing an MSCS in Seattle; Doxa Asibey, a rising second-year pursuing an MSCS in Boston; and Xinyu Hou, a first-year pursuing an MSCS in Boston. Each developed their own game. Su, who was born and raised in mainland China, developed “Golden Age,” a role-playing game about Chinese’ and Chinese Americans’ experiences in the 1800s. The game was intended to address the anti-Asian sentiment that has come to a head during the pandemic by educating players about the integration and contributions of Chinese Americans. Asibey, who was born in Ghana and raised in Western Massachusetts, developed “They Didn’t Mean That,” a game that focuses on the role third-party observers can play when they witness micro-validations, a type of microaggression that she describes as a backhanded compliment with racial overtones. Hou’s game, “What’s on Your Mind,” is also focused on allyship, and aims to help bystanders identify microaggressions and implement a range of intervention strategies.

Screeenshots from the Summer Faculty Reseach Showcase. Top row (L to R): Greg Waters, Doxa Asibey. Bottom (L to R): Jinqian Pan, Xinyu Hou.

Part of what the students found impactful in their research was the way they were able to tie in their personal experiences and values.

“When I was in New York, the pandemic started off. At the same time, I know we’ve been seeing the rise of anti-Asian hatred. I’ve seen the events happening around me, and I experienced some incidents as well,” Su said. Though motivated to do something, he didn’t know what, he explained, “Until I saw Professor To’s proposal and thought wow, that’s exactly what I want to do.”

Recalling instances of micro-validation, Asibey explained, “It’s like if someone says, ‘oh you’re speaking, really good English for an Asian person or a Black person’…initially you’re like ‘oh thank you’ but [then] you’re just like wait, why was that made towards me when everyone else is speaking English?” She reported, “I’ve had that comment been made to me several times, I’ve been in rooms where it’s made to other people.” She drew on these experiences in her work on To’s game.

Although the initial scope of To’s project was limited to a conversation prompt for participatory design work, her student researchers have imagined a variety of potential applications. They hope educational institutions and workplaces might adopt games like this as a form of anti-bias training, or see their potential as a participatory exhibit at museums.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work that they did this summer,” said To of the three researchers. “Doing research for the first time, learning how to develop a game, and doing all that narrative design, along with all the research work to understand this topic is a big undertaking for summer, and I thought the work was really amazing.”

List Curation
Another student research group chose to focus their efforts in the rapidly expanding world of human-computer interaction, or HCI.

Imagine you decide to rent a new apartment: you could look up “apartment” on Zillow or Apartments.com, but the sites will show you only the options that are the most popular or the most promoted, not the ones that best fit your needs. You could add filters like “two-bedroom” and “pet-friendly”, but just because an apartment has the amenities you’re looking for doesn’t mean you’re going to like it. You could browse through Facebook Marketplace and let an algorithm present options in line with your preferences, but an algorithm can only guess at what you like. Wouldn’t a service that allowed you to browse a list of apartments to make notes and clarify your preferences, and then took both your browsing habits and your annotations into account to update be the ideal way to find your next home?

This is exactly the niche that assistant professor John Alexis Guerra Gómez and Jinqian Pan, a first-year computer science graduate student who has since transferred from Northeastern to another university, aimed to address with their summer research project on list curation, the technical concept illustrated above in the real estate example. Their tool has nine modules — Data Loader, Sorter, Filterer, Summarizer, Annotator, Seener, Lister, Detailer, and Recommender — to make browsing a list as user-friendly as possible. The tool can be used in any setting where a user has a daunting list of options from which to select, from Kelley Blue Book to YouTube videos to Amazon search results for socks.

“What we do in information visualization is that we allow the user to navigate through complex data by using intelligent visual interfaces, interactive visual interfaces—the whole aim of this is to improve the life of users at the end of the day,” explained Guerra Gómez. “The advantage of this [list curator] is that if we can have a system that actually lets you do those searches, without and with less intervention from the computer, and that produces results that are more interesting for you, then that would be a win-win situation.”

To Guerra Gómez, the graduate summer research program is an opportunity for faculty too, enabling them to step out from behind the lectern and get hands-on.

“This is my passion. I’m not a professor in Northeastern just to teach the classes, or write the papers, I’m actually very interested in mentoring people and trying to plant that seed of interest on research and creativity and all of those things,” said Guerra Gómez. “I’m very proud of everything that Jinqian and all the other students have achieved.”

The value of a research showcase
Student research is a pillar of experiential learning at Khoury College, and while the majority of student researchers are doctoral students, the summer program provides a great opportunity for master’s students to get their feet wet in the world of research. The Summer Faculty Research Showcase is a way to share and celebrate all their hard work, and an opportunity to practice explaining it clearly and effectively.

“Our role as computer scientists has to go beyond a computer,” said Guerra Gómez. “It has to also go to the part of communicating what we did, to pitch it to other people—people that don’t know anything about computers. If they cannot understand it, then they will not adopt it or use it.”

To Waters’ eye, the showcase achieved exactly that.

“There is a lot of value in presenting and defending research projects — why are they valuable, what problems are being solved, why should people care?” said Waters. “Most presentations explained what they were doing with little jargon, and presented at least some of their early findings — enough so that the projects felt real and not just an exercise in intellectual gymnastics. A productive mix of nervousness and enthusiasm!”

Contributing reporting by Aditi Peyush

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