CUI Steering Committee

The ACM Conversational User Interfaces Steering Committee is responsibile for the overall organisation of the annual ACM CUI conference and workshop series. The following people are current members of the steering committee.

• 

  Cosmin Munteanu

  • Co-Chair (2019–2024)
  • CUI 2023 General Chair (2023–2026)

  Cosmin is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Director of the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully lab. His research is focused on investigating information-rich media and intelligent technologies, such as speech interfaces, for several applications: mobile devices, mixed reality systems, and learning and assistive technologies for marginalized users. With almost a quarter century of research at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Automatic Speech Recognition, Natural User Interfaces, Mobile Computing, Ethics, and Assistive Technologies.
• 

  Leigh Clark

  • Secretary (2019–2024)

  Leigh is a Senior UX Researcher at Bold Insight. Previously, he weas a Lecturer at the Computational Foundry in Swansea University. His research examines the effects of voice and language design on speech interface interactions and how linguistic theories can be implemented and redefined in this context. He is co-founder of the international Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) conference series.
• 

  Benjamin R Cowan

  • Conference Liaison (2019–2024)

  Benjamin is an Associate Professor at University College Dublin’s School of Information & Communication Studies. His research lies at the juncture between psychology, HCI and computer science in investigating how theoretical perspectives in human communication can be applied to understand phenomena in speech based human-machine communication. He has published widely on user centered issues in conversational and speech interface interaction, is co-founder of the international Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) conference series and has been involved in a number of workshops on this topic at CHI and Mobile HCI on designing speech and language technologies. He is also Co-PI on the Science Foundation Ireland ADAPT Centre, a €100 million world leading research centre on AI-driven digital content technologies.
• 

  Martin Porcheron

  • Technical Support Chair (2019–2024)
  • CUI 2023 General Chair (2023–2026)

  Martin is a Senior UX Researcher at Bold Insight UK. His recent work focuses on the user experience of interactive “AI” systems—from voice interfaces through to robot interfaces. In his PhD, he also studied public places like cafés and pubs, to understand how we use devices like smartphones while we are socialising. As well as organising a number of workshops at international conferences, he was Full Papers Chair for the inaugural CUI '19 conference and Programme Chair for CUI '20 and '21, and is General Chair for CUI '23.
• 

  Jaisie Sin

  • Outreach/Publicity Chair (2023–2026)

  Jaisie Sin is a PhD Candidate at the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully Lab and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the inclusive design of conversational interfaces for underrepresented users, with a primary focus on ageing. She has been a co-organizer of the CUI workshops at CHI '19–'23 (lead organizer in '23), IUI '20–'21, and CSCW '20. She was also the main organizer on the panel on voice user interfaces for ageing at CHI '23. In terms of the CUI conference series, she has served as a Full Papers Co-Chair (CUI '23), an Accessibility & Diversity Chair (CUI '22), and a Student Volunteer & Diversity Chair (CUI '21).
• 

  Andreea Danielescu

  • Industry/NGO Liaison (2023–2026)

  Andreea Danielescu is the Director of the Future Technologies R&D group at Accenture Labs. Her research group focused on new emerging technologies that blend the physical and digital. These technologies include biotechnology, smart materials, energy harvesting and storage and neuromorphic computing. Her specific areas of expertise also include conversational and gestural interfaces, wearable technologies, and AI and tech ethics.
  
  Prior to Accenture she worked as an engineer and researcher on conversational interfaces at both Facebook and Intel. She received her bachelor’s in computer science and mathematics from University of Arizona and her PhD from Arizona State University in Computer Science with an Arts, Media and Engineering concentration. Her thesis work focused on designing gestures for public displays.
• 

  Christine Murad

  • Student Representative (2019–2024)

  Christine is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. Her research looks at the usability and design of conversational voice interfaces, the development of different tools and resources to aid designers in CUI & VUI design and education, and bridging the industry-academia gap in CUI & VUI design. She’s published research and organized CUI workshops across several international SIGCHI venues such as CHI, IUI, MobileHCI, CSCW, CUI, etc. She has been part of the steering committee since it’s inception in 2019, and was the Shortcases chair at CUI ’20, Demos Chair at ’21, and is now Provocations Chair at CUI ’23.
• 

  Minha Lee

  • CUI 2023 General Chair (2023–2026)

  Minha Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology's Industrial Design Department with a background in philosophy, digital arts, and HCI. Lee's research on moral emotions targets mental well-being by exploring conversational agents like robots or chatbots as our moral mirrors that extend who we are. A major application area for her research is in exploring conversational agents for dementia care to foster compassionate conversations, which has been funded by Alzheimer Nederland. Lee is the general co-chair of the 2023 ACM Conversational User Interface (CUI) Conference (Eindhoven), after being a Full papers and Provocation papers co-chair (2021, 2020). The 2023 CUI conference theme highlights diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which relates to various workshops Lee has led at major HCI conferences, e.g., CHI 2022 workshop on CUI Ethics, CSCW 2022 workshop on Activism in Academia, and HRI 2021 workshop on Artificial Identity.
• 

  Martin Halvey

  • CUI 2022 General Chair (2022–2025)

  Martin Halvey is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS). His research interests are in multimodel interaction, interactive information retrieval and human computer interaction (HCI). He is particularly interested in novel uses of multimodal technology to facilitate appropriate search and interaction with information. Martin is also the one of the theme leaders for the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) HCI theme and the Vice Chaire of the ACM SIGIR CHIIR Steering Committee.
• 

  Stephan Schlögl

  • CUI 2021 General Chair (2021–2024)

  Stephan is an Associate Professor in the Dept. Management, Communication IT at theMCI Management Center Innsbruck. His main research interest lies in human-computer interaction, particularly focusing on conversational user interfaces and other types of AI supported interaction modalities. He was one of the general chairs for the CUI 2020 conference.
• 

  María Inés Torres

  • CUI 2021 General Chair (2021–2024)

  María is Full Professor at UPV/EHU Univeridad del Pais Vasco and director of the SPIN RG Speech Interactive Research Group. Her research focuses on statistical approaches to deal with spoken dialog systems, aiming to learn from human interaction to generate artificial interaction. Furthermore, she and her group look at methods to identify emotions in speech. She is one of the general chairs for the CUI 2020 conference.