YASMIN CHOWDHURY

Email: yasmin.chowdhury8@gmail.com 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/yasminchowdhury

Website: yasminchowdhury.squarespace.com

 

Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Cognitive Psychology Expected 2022

University of California, Santa Cruz

Master of Science in Cognitive Psychology Aug 2018

University of California, Santa Cruz

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology May 2014

California State University, Northridge

Experience

Ph.D Student Researcher | University of California, Santa Cruz     Sept 2016-present                                        

Advisor: Professor Jean Fox Tree

I research how technology influences how we communicate and feel about ourselves. 

Effects of Group Size on Social Presence in Videoconferencing

  • Designed and conducted experiments on how group sizes (dyads, triads, quads) impact feelings of social presence and social loafing using on an online videoconferencing platform (N=40)

  • Created standardized measures on social presence by compiling measures of immediacy and intimacy

Job Interviews Using Telepresence Robots

  • Led a cross-university collaborative study examining how job candidates’ responses to interview questions change in a mock interview with a telepresence robot (N=54)

  • Developed a qualitative video codebook to measure creativity based on object movement and manipulation

  • Conducted a narrative analysis on participants’ stories to examine how physical presence affects storytelling

Evaluating the Effects of Telepresence Robots on Children in Classrooms

  • Collaborated with the Interaction Lab at University of Southern California on an interdisciplinary project

  • Designed and conducted a controlled experiment on the use of telepresence robots in elementary/middle schools and how it impacts students’ learning outcomes and feelings of self-presence through personalization (N=24)

  • Analyzed quantitative attitudinal survey data and conducted follow-up interviews with participants aged 9-13 

Effects of Robot Voice and Height on Trust and Credibility

  • Designed and conducted a controlled experiment on how human vs. synthetic voices and telepresence robot height affect trust and credibility

  • Gathered standardized metrics of trust and credibility, vetted them, and deployed the most useful metrics

Teaching Assistant, Intro to UX | University of California, Santa Cruz Sept 2019-Dec 2019 

Instructor: Professor Leila Takayama

  • Coached 60 undergraduate students on quarter-long research projects, from conception to conclusion

  • Created lecture and workshop materials for class discussion sections, and moderated discussions

Skills

UX Research Methods: Participant interviews, qualitative data, quantitative data analysis

Software: SPSS, R, Survey Platforms (Qualtrics, Survey Monkey), Linguistic Word Count Analysis (LIWC), Adobe Suite

Publications

Fitter, N. T., Chowdhury, Y., Cha, E., Takayama, L., & Matarić, M. J. (2018). Evaluating the Effects of Personalized Appearance on Telepresence Robots for Education. Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 109-110). ACM.

Conference Presentations

Nguyen, A., Guydish, A., Chowdhury, Y., & Fox Tree, J. (2019, November). Little Words in a Big Corpus. Poster presented at the annual Psychonomic Society conference, Montreal, QC, Canada

Fitter, N. T., Chowdhury, Y., Cha, E., Takayama, L., & Matarić, M. J. (2018, March). Evaluating the Effects of Personalized Appearance on Telepresence Robots for Education. Poster presented at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Chicago, Illinois

Fellowships and Awards

  • Graduate Pedagogy Fellowship (2020), $2000

  • University of California, Santa Cruz Psychology Summer Research Award (2019), $1200

  • Frank X. Barron Memorial Award in Creativity Research (2018), $2000

  • University of California, Santa Cruz Psychology Summer Research Award (2018), $2400

  • University of California, Santa Cruz Regents Fellowship (2017), $5000

Mentorship

Summer Internship Program Jun 2018-Aug 2020

  • Mentored senior/junior college-bound high school students as research assistants on academic research practices

M.I.N.T. Mentorship Program Sept 2018-Jun 2020

  • Work and meet biweekly with underrepresented and first-generation college students to matriculate them into graduate school

  • Prepared students for graduate school by advising on college admission essays and graduate record examinations

Teaching Assistant Mentor Jan 2019-Jun 2019

  • Led bi-weekly meetings with first time teaching assistant graduate students 

  • Supervised sections and assist with material preparation