Ehsan Hoque (academic)

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Ehsan Hoque
Rochester-Effect.jpg
Ehsan Hoque at New World Stages in New York, speaking at the "Being Human in a Digital Age" session
Alma mater Penn State University (BS)
University of Memphis (MS)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)
Awards Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2025)
ACM Distinguished Member (2022)
Emerging Leaders in Health & Medicine by National Academy of Medicine (2020)
Scientist to Watch by Science News (2017)
Alumni Achievement Award by Penn State University (2017)
Innovators Under 35 (2016)
Scientific career
Fields Social skills training
Computational Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence
Human-centric computing
Institutions University of Rochester
Thesis Computers to Help with Conversations: Affective Framework to Enhance Human Nonverbal Skills  (2013)
Doctoral advisor Rosalind Picard
Website http://hoques.com/

Ehsan Hoque is an American computer scientist and academic. He is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Rochester in New York. [1]

Contents

Hoque is most known for his work in the field of human-centered artificial intelligence, particularly in utilizing AI methods to augment and enhance human capabilities. His work revolves around affective computing, speech processing, and computer vision.

Education

Hoque completed his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Penn State University in 2004, and then obtained a master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Memphis in 2007. Later, he completed his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013, where the MIT Museum highlighted his Ph.D. thesis as one of the most unconventional inventions of MIT. [1] [2] In 2017, he received Alumni Achievement Award from Penn State University. [3]

Career

Hoque began his academic career in 2013 by joining the University of Rochester as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department, becoming a professor in 2024. [1]

Hoque served as the Interim Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science at the University of Rochester between 2018 and 2019, and held the Assaro-Biggar family fellowship from 2016 to 2019. [1] As of 2023, he serves as a board member of the National Academies Health Sciences Policy. [4]

From 2023-2024, he served as the Chief Scientist of the National Center for AI, Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence--the ministry for AI within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Research

Hoque holds a patent for the concept of utilizing a computer as a conversational mentor, which was introduced in 2012 and later integrated by Microsoft as "Speaker Coach" in PowerPoint. [5] In 2019, along with colleagues, he helped establish the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson's Disease Research by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes (NINDS) at the University of Rochester. He has authored numerous publications spanning the areas of Artificial Intelligence, human-centered computing, and medicine, including articles in peer-reviewed journals. [6]

Social skills training

Hoque has worked in developing computational techniques to enable social skills training. In 2012, he developed an Automated Conversation Helper that utilized a 3D virtual character to act as an interviewer during a job interview. It offered immediate feedback on the participant's nonverbal behavior by employing advanced technology to detect facial expressions, analyze speech patterns and respond in real-time with synthesized speech and behavior. [7] In related research, his work concluded that automated technologies, specifically those that analyze nonverbal communication and provide feedback, such as My Automated Conversation coacH (MACH), offer a personalized approach to enhancing human social interaction and have the potential to be utilized for both practical and therapeutic purposes. [8] He and his students have expanded the research to develop Live Interactive Social Skills Assistant (LISSA) and Standardized Online Patient for Healthcare Interaction Education (SOPHIE). LISSA provides real-time feedback on smiling, eye contact, body movement and volume in real-time and has been validated to help individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. [9] SOPHIE has been designed to train doctors to have more empathy and be explicit with information while dealing with final-stage cancer patients. [10]

Tele-neurology

Hoque has worked on developing techniques, technologies, and theories, to improve the capacity to accurately recognize, interpret, and respond to human nonverbal cues. He demonstrated that those techniques have implications in health AI. He and his students have developed Parkinson's Analysis with Remote-Kinetic tasks (PARK)—a webcam-based system enabling neurological care to be available anytime, anywhere. The system allows remote participants to perform a set of UPDRS test using a webcam and a microphone and receive a screening for Parkinson's disease, and have the severity of their tremors being automatically measured. [11]

Awards and honors

Personal

Hoque is a triathlete and finished an Ironman Triathlon in 2022 at Maryland [18] and at Lake Placid [19] in 2023.

Selected articles

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Ehsan Hoque". www.cs.rochester.edu.
  2. Marcotte, Bob (October 4, 2017). "Ehsan Hoque, among '10 Scientists to Watch,' is a study in resiliency".
  3. "Behrend graduate M. Ehsan Hoque wins university Alumni Achievement award". Penn State Behrend.
  4. "About the Board on Health Sciences Policy – National Academies".
  5. "Methods and apparatus for conversation coach".
  6. "Ehsan Hoque". scholar.google.com.
  7. Hoque, Mohammed E. (October 22, 2012). "My automated conversation helper (MACH): helping people improve social skills". Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 313–316. doi:10.1145/2388676.2388745 via ACM Digital Library.
  8. Hoque, Mohammed Ehsan; Picard, Rosalind W. (April 23, 2014). "Rich Nonverbal Sensing Technology for Automated Social Skills Training". Computer. 47 (4): 28–35. Bibcode:2014Compr..47d..28H. doi:10.1109/MC.2014.98.
  9. Ali, Mohammad Rafayet; Crasta, Dev; Jin, Li; Baretto, Agustin; Pachter, Joshua; Rogge, Ronald D.; Hoque, Mohammed Ehsan (September 23, 2015). "LISSA — Live Interactive Social Skill Assistance". 2015 International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII). pp. 173–179. doi:10.1109/ACII.2015.7344568. ISBN   978-1-4799-9953-8 via IEEE Xplore.
  10. "SOPHIE: Standardized Online Patient for Healthcare Interaction Education – ROC HCI".
  11. "Parkinson's Analysis with Remote Tasks – ROC HCI".
  12. "The SN 10: Meet the scientists ready to transform their fields". October 4, 2017.
  13. "Hoque receives $1M Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (ECASE) – ROC HCI".
  14. Marcotte, Bob (May 8, 2020). "Ehsan Hoque named an 'emerging leader' by National Academy of Medicine".
  15. "Ehsan Hoque". awards.acm.org.
  16. "Ehsan Hoque". www.media.mit.edu.
  17. "PECASE 2025". White House . 14 January 2025.
  18. "IRONMAN Maryland 2022 final results".
  19. "IRONMAN Lake Placid 2023 final results".