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Page last modified on March 27th 2024 (20:49:39)
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Prof. Luis A. Leiva

Assistant Professor and Senior research scientist

University of Luxembourg, Dept. Computer Science

6, Avenue de la Fonte L-4364 — Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg)
Homepage https://luis.leiva.name
Twitter https://twitter.com/luileito
LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/in/luileito

Microformats: vCard, hCard

Presentation
Why hello there! I'm a professor of the department of computer science at the University of Luxembourg. My research lies at the intersection of Machine Learning and Human-Computer Interaction. I'm a former postdoctoral scholar from Aalto University and research staff member (postdoctoral fellow) of the PRHLT research center at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). I'm also co-founder and former CTO of Sciling, a Spanish company specialized in Machine Learning solutions.
You can download my short bio (plain text) or my research CV (PDF).
I got a PhD (with honors & international mention & extraordinary doctorate award) in Computer Science in 2012. I also got two BSc degrees —Industrial Design (2001) and Industrial Engineering (2005)— an MSc in Communications and Mobile Services Development (2006), and a MAS in Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence (2008) from the UPV.
I have coauthored 2 granted patents and have participated in 15 research transfer projects, most of them being exploited today by private companies and public institutions. I have been a visiting researcher at the DFKI institute in Saarbrücken, the hciLab in Stuttgart, and the User Interfaces group in Helsinki. I also have been a visiting professor at FAMNIT (University of Primorska) in Slovenia.
Fun fact: My p-index is 0.6, which means that I don't use to profit from my co-authors.
Research

research interests

I do multidisciplinary research at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Machine Learning. My main research area is Computational Interaction, where I combine computational thinking -- abstraction, automation, and analysis -- with data-driven models and methods to enable, explain, and support user interaction. My research vision is to make the most of computing systems using the least amount of information from the user. I firmly believe that users are a scarce resource, so they have to be optimized. In pursuit of that goal, I have considered two ways to obtain valuable user feedback without burdening the user: (1) implicit interaction, where the user does not provide information on purpose, and (2) synthetic data generation, where the computer simulates human-like data on behalf of the user.
Following my research on implicit interaction, I have exploited mouse cursor movements to conduct large-scale usability evaluations, predict user engagement, aid website revisitation, or restyle web design. Based on my research on synthetic data generation, I have used kinematic motor control models to synthesize stroke gestures that possess human-like characteristics and that can generalize across user populations.
Previously, I have been working on phrase sampling for text entry, agile software localization, mixed-initiative interfaces, relevance-feedback image retrieval, adaptive user interfaces, and responsive text summarization. Overall, I'm used to learning different skills and combine them in creative ways. For instance: a polyglot machine translator tailored to one's mother language; a word soup game to transcribe text images; or a usable captcha scheme for mobile devices based on handwriting math recognition.
Disclaimer: I write papers with LaTeX and a control version system (GIT or SVN). I tolerate some online editors such as ShareLaTeX and Overleaf, but not Microsoft Word.

research projects

  • Jul 2023 - Dec 2026 I'm coordinating the SCRIPTOR project (FNR, AFR-Bilateral program). We will develop efficient and understandable models of human handwriting. The project will last from 2023-07-01 to 2026-12-31.
  • Oct 2022 - Oct 2026 I'm coordinating the SYMBIOTIK project (EIC Pathfinder program, HORIZON EUROPE). We propose an AI-driven awareness framework to create symbiotic self-adaptive InfoVis systems that will help us engineer novel forms of consciousness. The project will last from 2022-10-01 to 2026-12-31.
  • Feb 2022 - Jan 2025 I'm coordinating project BANANA (CHIST-ERA, HORIZON EUROPE). We will advance research in Brain Computer Interfaces by means of Brainsourcing for Affective Attention Estimation. The project will last from 2022-02-01 to 2025-01-31.
  • Jun 2021 - Jan 2022 I got a national grant to support the preparation of European projects under the HORIZON EUROPE Rapid Incentive Scheme (UL-RISE).
  • Sep 2020 - Dec 2020 I led The Teaching Wizard, a pilot project of the A!OLE Learning Services. We are creating a database and search interface to help teachers select the best teaching methods according to their needs and constraints. The project lasted from 2020-07-01 to 2020-12-31.
  • Apr 2020 - Dec 2020 I helped to coordinate Aalto partnership in the HumaneAI consortium (European Commission ICT-48-2020, grant 761758). We are designing the principles for a new science that will make artificial intelligence based on European values and closer to Europeans. The project will last from 2020-04-01 to 2023-04-01.
  • Jan 2020 - Mar 2020 I collaborated in COMPUTED (European Research Council, grant 637991). The project investigates computational methods for UI design. The project lasted from 2015-04-01 to 2020-03-31.
  • Jan 2019 - Dec 2020 I collaborated in BAD: Bayesian Artefact Design (Academy of Finland, grant 318559). The project advances computational design by establishing methodological foundations for artificially intelligent design and design thinking. The project will last from 2018-09-01 to 2022-08-31.
  • Jan 2015 - Dec 2015 I was the Principal Investigator of the JITL project (Spanish MECD, VLC/CAMPUS, grants SP20140775 and SP20140841). JITL is a method to automatically internationalize websites and web-based applications, without having to modify the source code. The project lasted from 2015-01-01 to 2015-12-31.
  • May 2015 - Dec 2015 I was also the Principal Investigator of the μcaptcha project (VLC/CAMPUS, grant SP20141428). μcaptcha is a novel CAPTCHA scheme tailored to touch devices via math handwriting. This project tested the commercial value of μcaptcha in the industry, and lasted from 2014-05-01 to 2015-12-31.
  • Mar 2015 - Dec 2015 I collaborated in ALMAMATER: Adaptive Learning and MultimodAlity in MAchine Translation and tExt tRanscription (GVA, grant PROMETEOII/2014/030). ALMAMATER is a step forward the MIPRCV project, focused on the human-in-the-loop approach to solve PR challenges. The project is planned to last from 2014-01-01 to 2017-12-31.
  • Nov 2014 - Feb 2015 I worked in STraDa (Spanish MINECO, grant TIN2012-37475-C02-01). STraDa aims at developing HTR technologies that ease the task of searching for information in ancient handwritten documents and then extracting semantics from such information. The project lasted from 2013-02-01 to 2015-12-31.
  • Nov 2013 - Oct 2014 I worked in tranScriptorium (European Commission FP7, grant 600707). tranScriptorium aims to develop innovative, efficient and cost-effective solutions for the indexing, search and full transcription of historical handwritten document images, using modern, holistic Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology. The project lasted from 2013-01-01 to 2015-12-31.
  • Dec 2012 - Oct 2013 I worked in CasMaCat: Cognitive Analysis and Statistical Methods for Advanced Computer Aided Translation (European Commission FP7, grant 287576). The CASMACAT project is aimed to build the next generation translator's workbench to improve productivity, quality, and work practices in the translation industry. The project lasted from 2011-11-01 to 2014-10-31.
  • Sep 2009 - Nov 2012 I worked in MIPRCV: Multimodal Interaction in Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision (Consolider program, Spanish MICINN, grant CSD2007-00018). MIPRCV established a 5-year research program to develop PR and CV approaches that explicitly deal with the challenges and opportunities entailed by the HCI paradigm. The project lasted from 2007-12-10 to 2012-12-09.

academic activities

I'm registered as an independent expert for the European Commission research program. I'm a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), and the Asociación Interacción Persona-Ordenador (AIPO). I was affiliated with the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) until 2020. I was a member of the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR) and the Asociación Española de Reconocimiento de Formas y Análisis de Imágenes (AERFAI) until 2013 or so.
I'm currently serving as associate editor for the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. I'm a regular reviewer for CHI, IUI, SIGIR, MobileHCI and ICMI. I've reviewed occasionally for CS conferences like UIST, WWW, WSDM, CIKM, InfoVis, EICS, DIS, UbiComp, PervasiveHealth, MUM, or ISMAR. I've also reviewed occasionally for CS journals like IwC, IJHCS, Pattern Recognition, TWEB, IMWUT, ESWA, ECRA, or THMS.
I've served on the Program Committee of CHI, SIGIR, MobileHCI, IUI, ICMI, ICWE, HaCat, and CIKM. I've also co-chaired the posters track of MobileHCI'16 and was Associate Chair of the Late Breaking Work category at CHI'16. I'm currently serving on the Program Committee of CHI and IUI conferences, among others.
All my scholarship activities are listed on my CV.

publications

You can browse all my research publications in a single HTML page, including all preprints in PDF. You can also browse my publications at Google Scholar, DBLP, or ACM Digital Library.

selected (last 5 years)

  1. Yoelvis Moreno, V. Javier Traver, Luis A. Leiva. Sneaky Emotions: Impact of Data Partitions in Affective Computing Experiments with Brain-Computer Interfacing. Biomedical Engineering Letters, Vol. 14 2023. DOI, PDF.
  2. Désirée C.A. Lemarquis, Bereket A. Yilma, Luis A. Leiva. What Can a Swiped Word Tell Us More? Demographic and Behavioral Correlates from Shape-Writing Text Entry. Neural Computing and Applications, 2023. DOI, PDF.
  3. Luis A. Leiva, Asutosh Hota, Antti Oulasvirta. Describing UI Screenshots in Natural Language. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, Vol. 14(1), 2022. DOI, PDF.
  4. Luis A. Leiva, Shiripour Morteza, Antti Oulasvirta. Modeling How Different User Groups Perceive Webpage Aesthetics. Universal Access in the Information Society, 2022. DOI, PDF.
  5. Klen Čopič Pucihar, Nuwan T. Attygalle, Matjaž Kljun, Christian Sandor, Luis A. Leiva. Solids on Soli: Millimetre-Wave Radar Sensing through Materials. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), (EICS), 2022. DOI, PDF.
  6. Lukas Brückner, Luis A. Leiva, Antti Oulasvirta. Learning GUI Completions with User-defined Constraints. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, Vol. 12(1), 2022. DOI, PDF.
  7. Lokesh Kumar T., Luis A. Leiva. Attentive Sequence-to-Sequence Modeling of Stroke Gestures Articulation Performance. IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, Vol. 51(6), 2021. DOI, PDF.
  8. V. Javier Traver, Judith Zorío, Luis A. Leiva. Glimpse: A Gaze-Based Measure of Temporal Salience. Sensors, Vol. 21(9), 2021. DOI, PDF.
  9. Luis A. Leiva, Asutosh Hota, Antti Oulasvirta. Interactive Exploration of Large-scale UI Datasets with Design Maps. Interacting with Computers, Vol. 32(5-6), 2021. DOI, PDF.
  10. Sameera Palipana, Dariush Salami, Luis A. Leiva, Stephan Sigg. Pantomime: Mid-Air Gesture Recognition with Sparse Millimeter-Wave Radar Point Clouds. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), Vol. 5(1), 2021. DOI, PDF.
  11. Luis A. Leiva, Ioannis Arapakis. The Attentive Cursor Dataset. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Vol. 14 2020. DOI, PDF.
  12. Luis A. Leiva, Radu-Daniel Vatavu, Daniel Martín-Albo, Réjean Plamondon. Omnis Praedictio: Estimating the Full Spectrum of Human Performance with Stroke Gestures. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Vol. 142 2020. DOI, PDF.
  13. Ioannis Arapakis, Antonio Penta, Hideo Joho, Luis A. Leiva. A Price-Per-Attention Auction Scheme Using Mouse Cursor Information. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Vol. 38(2), 2020. DOI, PDF.

Invited talks

  1. Luis A. Leiva. Temporal Saliency. June, 2023. Keynote at the Intl. Workshop on Pervasive Eye Tracking and Mobile Eye-Based Interaction (PETMEI). Info.
  2. Luis A. Leiva. It's not what you do, but how you do it: Information retrieval with implicit interaction. March, 2021. Keynote at Elements of AI, Luxembourg. Info.
  3. Luis A. Leiva. Synthesizing Human-like Stroke Gestures with the Kinematic Theory. May, 2021. Keynote at the multiTOUCH Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network. Info.
  4. Luis A. Leiva. Predicting User Engagement with Direct Displays on SERPs. January, 2020. Silo.AI, Helsinki. Info.
  5. Luis A. Leiva. Measurement in user research. September, 2020. Guest lecture. Info.
  6. Luis A. Leiva. Computational Modeling of Handwriting Movements. October, 2020. Plenary talk (keynote) at RoCHI'20, Sibiu. Info.
  7. Luis A. Leiva. Introduction to Deep Learning. December, 2020. Guest lecture. Info.
  8. Luis A. Leiva. Synthetic Generation of Human-like Data. May, 2019. Aalto University, Helsinki. Info.
  9. Luis A. Leiva. Your brain in motion: challenges and opportunities for data-driven implicit interaction. June, 2019. Plenary talk (keynote) at IGS'19, Cancun. Info.
  10. Luis A. Leiva. Human Vision System: Deep Learning Models. November, 2019. Guest lecture. Info.
  11. Luis A. Leiva. Recent Research Adventures at Sciling. May, 2018. UP-FAMNIT, Koper. Info.
  12. Luis A. Leiva. Optimización para venta multi-dioma. June, 2016. eComm Beers, Bilbao. Info.
  13. Luis A. Leiva. Detecting content changes, one word at a time: an API for web-based NLP. May, 2015. APIdays Mediterranea, Barcelona. Info, more info.
  14. Luis A. Leiva. Human-Computer Interaction meets Machine Learning. May, 2015. Telefónica I+D, Barcelona. Info.
  15. Vicent Alabau, Luis A. Leiva. Las matemáticas de la lengua. June, 2014. Lenguando, Valencia. Info.
  16. Luis A. Leiva. Implicit Human-Computer Interaction with Web-based Systems. Apr, 2012. Yahoo! Labs, Barcelona. Info.
  17. Luis A. Leiva. Interacción y Aprendizaje. May, 2012. Universitat Jaume I, Castelló. Info.
  18. Luis A. Leiva. The Role of Implicit Interaction between Users and Computers. Dec, 2011. DFKI, Saarbrücken. Info.

Press coverage

Awards & honors

  • Best paper award nominee at UMAP'23.
  • Outstanding Reviewer Recognition at CHI'23.
  • Best paper honorable mention at EICS'22.
  • Reviewer Recognition at ICMI'22.
  • Reviewer Recognition at IUI'22.
  • Outstanding reviewer recognition at ICMI'21.
  • Outstanding reviewer recognition at MobileHCI'21.
  • Reviewer Recognition at INTERACT'21.
  • Quality Teaching Awards finalist at Aalto University, 2020.
  • Top-10 Master's level course (ELEC-E7870) at Aalto University, 2020. Info.
  • Reviewer Recognition at UIST'20.
  • Reviewer Recognition at ICMI'20.
  • Reviewer Recognition at ISMAR'20.
  • Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Seal of excellence, 2019. Info.
  • Outstanding Reviewer Recognition at ACM IMWUT'17.
  • Outstanding Reviewer Recognition at CHI'16.
  • Honorable mention award in the ICT category at Valencia Idea, 2015. Info.
  • Sciling has been awarded with an SME Instrument, 2015. Info.
  • Extraordinary PhD thesis award, 2014. Info.
  • First prize at "Innovation and Commercial Excellence" awards Consum-UPV, 2014. Info.
  • ACM SRC semi-finalist at SIGGRAPH, 2011. Info.
  • Honorable mention award in the ICT category at Valencia Idea competition, 2010. Info.
  • Best demonstration award at the 13th European Conf. on Digital Libraries (ECDL), 2009. Info.
  • First prize in the Interactive Design category at Valencia Crea 8, 2007. Info.
  • Honorable mention award in the Interactive Design category at Valencia Crea 6, 2005. Info.
Teaching

Courses and Lectures

In June 2022 I taught Deep Learning for HCI in the 6th Computational Interaction Summer School at Saarland University.
In February 2022 I'm starting a new MSc course: Prototyping with Deep Learning at the University of Luxembourg.
In September 2021 I'm starting two new BSc courses about Web development at the University of Luxembourg.
In November 2020 I gave a guest lecture about Deep Learning in the Computational User Interface Design course at Aalto University.
In September 2020 and 2021 I gave the guest lecture Measurement in user research in the User Research course at Aalto University.
In Fall 2019 I started a brand new course at Aalto University: DL4HCI: Deep Learning for Human-Computer Interaction. Course materials here. The course was rated among the top-10 best Master's level courses!
In November 2019 I gave the guest lecture Human Vision System: Deep Learning Models in the Computational User Interface Design course at Aalto University.
In May 2018 I was a visiting professor at University of Primorska, where I taught the On-line Gesture Recognition class as part of the Master's course selected topics in HCI. Slides here.
In April 2014 I taught On-line Gesture Recognition at the UPV Master's program Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition and Digital Imaging. I'm sharing my lecture slides under a CC license for anyone to use.
From 2007 to 2010 I taught (near 20 hours per semester) the module Multimedia & Graphical Interfaces, part of the subject Application development tools, at the UPV Master program 'Communications and Mobile Services Development'. See the student's corner (in Spanish).
I was a course instructor at System Centros de Formación (Valencia) from 2001 to 2002.

Alumni

  • Sena Kilinç, Research assistant, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Eliott Bonte, Research assistant, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Alexis Ciarrone, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Nima Gozalpour, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Max Sinner, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Mbajwa Michael, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Cagri Ustundag, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Yasmine Barghouti, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2023.
  • Meryem Atrache, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Jérôme Bortuzzo, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Désirée C. A. Lemarquis, MSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Paul R. B. Houssel, BSc student and research intern, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Dany M. Pais, BSc student and research intern, University of Luxembourg, 2021-2022.
  • Rui F. Giesta, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Paulo R. Botelho, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Adel Dedic, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Kevin Curado, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • David Matos, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Fabio Di Biase, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Carlos V. Gonçalves, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2022.
  • Kristina Kudryavtseva, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2021.
  • Noé Jager, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2021-2022.
  • Esada Licina, research intern, University of Luxembourg, 2021.
  • Daniel Duarte, BSc student and research intern, University of Luxembourg, 2021-2023.
  • Guillaume Tostes, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2021-2022.
  • Nicholas Borges, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2021.
  • Alya Bolowich, BSc student, University of Luxembourg, 2021-2022.
  • Samuel Rosas, BSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Lukas Brückner, MSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Pin Tian, BSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Richard Lengyel, MSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Oleg Vlasovetc, MSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Laura Ham, MSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Oskari Ojala, BSc student, Aalto University, 2020.
  • Asutosh Hota, research assistant, Aalto University, 2019.
  • Lokesh Kumar, research intern, Aalto University, 2019.
  • Preetha Datta, research intern, Aalto University, 2019.
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