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Wise Macaw

We are five graduate and undergraduate students of cognitive science, computer science, and applied physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

By Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Location: Troy, NY, USA
Faculty advisor: Mei Si

Our motivation stems from companionship being a fundamental human desire. Our goal is to build a virtual companion - an emotionally intelligent bot that can converse with a human. The bot will use its personality, humor, and information obtained from online knowledge resources to engage its human partner on both the emotional and practical levels. Our companion bot will bond with its users and make the user-experience as life-like as possible.

Rahul D. - Team leader

I am a Master's student concentrating in software engineering. I will be starting in the PhD program in the computer science department at RPI from Spring 2017. I have a strong interest in Natural Language Processing and Data Analytics.

Craig C.

I am a co-terminal student working on my MS in Computer Science and my BS in Computer Science / Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences. I am primarily interested in AI, specifically AI that interacts with people. My current research is on narrative agents and my ultimate goal is to one day bring sophisticated AI to the realm of videogames.

Jieming J.

I am Sophomore majoring in Computer Science. I am interested in Machine Learning, NLP and AI in general. I worked at CogWorks Lab as an undergraduate Research Assistant.

Qingyun W.

I am a Sophomore majoring in Computer Science and Applied Physics. I'm interested in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. I worked at Scientific Computation Research Center as a research assistant.

Zev B.

I am a graduate student pursuing a PhD in Cognitive Science. I have a Dual BS in Computer Science and Computer & Systems Engineering from RPI. I work in the CISL lab at RPI making immersive storytelling systems for big data. My primary interests are in AI, intelligent virtual agents, narrative generation & storytelling, and big data exploration. I hope to one day expand the abilities of AI agents so digital characters in virtual environments that can truly be interacted with as one does with other human beings.

Mei Si - Faculty advisor

Mei Si is an assistant professor in the Cognitive Science Department. She is also part of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Program at RPI. Mei Si received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and a M.A. in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. Her primary research interest is embodied conversational agents, and cognitive robots. Mei has more than ten years of experience developing virtual environments and intelligent conversational agents for serious games. Her work is supported by Disney, DOD, NIH, the ESA foundation and IBM research.

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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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