Dr. Erin Walker is the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh, and is a Professor with joint appointments in Computer Science and the Learning Research and Development Center. She completed her PhD in 2010 in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, and was subsequently awarded a Computing Innovations Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2013, she became faculty in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, and moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 2019. Her research spans human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and educational technology. More specifically, she uses interdisciplinary methods to improve the design and implementation of educational technology, and then to understand when and why it is effective. Her current focus is two-fold: Examine how artificial intelligence techniques can be applied to support social human-human and human agent learning interactions, and use educational data mining approaches to develop deeper understanding of learners’ cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational states in the use of learning technologies. Her work has resulted in over fifteen journal articles and forty-five peer-reviewed full conference papers, including best paper awards at Creativity and Cognition and CHI, a best poster award at AIED, best young researcher’s track paper award at AIED, and additional award nominations at ITS, AIED, and CSCL.
Adaptive learning environments, computer-supported collaboration, human-robot interaction, culturally-responsive design, human-computer interaction
