B13 Non-invasive Classification of Alzheimer's Disease Using Eye Tracking and Language

I am a CIHR Health System Impact Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science and the Data Science Institute at the University of British Columbia and at the BC Centre for Disease Control. I work with Giuseppe Carenini, Raymond Ng, Naveed Janjua, Thalia Field, and Richard Lester. I received my Ph.D. from the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. My advisor was Carolyn Rose, and my thesis committee members were Eduard Hovy, Louis-Philippe Morency, and Ekaterina Shutova. My work explores language use from a computational perspective to facilitate human communication. Using Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, I discover patterns in text and build computational models of language use that are able to process large amounts of linguistic data. I investigate how people use language by bridging computer science and the disciplines of linguistics and psychology in the health care domain.

Dr. Giuseppe Carenini, PhD, is a Professor in Computer Science and the Director of Master of Data Science program at UBC. His work on natural language processing and information visualization to support decision making has been published in over 130 peer-reviewed papers (including best paper at UMAP-14 and ACM-TiiS-14). Giuseppe served as Senior Area Chair at NAACL; Area Chair at ACL, NAACL, EMNLP; and as Program Chair at SigDial and IUI. In 2011, he published a co-authored book on “Methods for Mining and Summarizing Text Conversations”. Giuseppe was awarded a Google Research Award, an IBM CASCON Best Exhibit Award, and a Yahoo Faculty Research Award in 2007, 2010 and 2016.

Dr. Conati is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She received a M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Milan, as well as a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Intelligent Systems at the University of Pittsburgh. Conati’s research is at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Cognitive Science, with the goal to create intelligent interactive systems that can capture relevant user’s properties (states, skills, needs) and personalize the interaction accordingly. Conati has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in this field and her research has received awards from a variety of venues, including UMUAI, the Journal of User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction (2002), the ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2007), the International Conference of User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP 2013, 2014), TiiS, ACM Transactions on Intelligent Interactive Systems (2014), and the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2016). Dr. Conati is an associate editor for UMUAI, ACM TiiS, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. She served as President of AAAC as well as Program or Conference Chair for several international conferences including UMAP, ACM IUI, and AI in Education.

Dr. Thalia Field, an Associate Professor in the Division of Neurology, is a stroke neurologist and clinician-researcher with a focus on clinical trials. She holds the Sauder Family/Heart and Stroke Foundation Professorship of Stroke Research. She is currently leading a national study examining treatment strategies and prognosis of cerebral venous thrombosis, a rare cause of stroke primarily affecting younger women. She has a particular interest in process improvement in clinical trials, including working with patients to identify important outcomes, and integrating existing and emergent technology to enhance efficiency and engage under-represented populations. She completed her MD at Dalhousie University, followed by her neurology training at the University of British Columbia and stroke fellowship and epidemiology training at the University of British Columbia and the University of Calgary.

Tom Soroski started with the CANARY team in September 2018 as a co-op research assistant while completing his undergraduate degree. Tom was part of the CANARY project from its inception; applying for ethical approval, helping set up the data collection protocol, and recruiting the first study participants. Tom graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Microbiology and Immunology, and returned to work on the project full-time as the study manager. Tom enjoys being part of CANARY project as it allows him to work closely with patients and their families, and to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease research.

Sally Newton-Mason is a research assistant with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from UBC. Previously she has worked as a care-aid, and loves interacting with families in a clinical setting. CANARY is a very special project to her as it combines her passion for healthcare with her curiosities in artificial intelligence. She loves that the research aims to innovate and improve healthcare paradigms. In the future she is planning to pursue a Bachelors of Nursing to further her opportunities in the Healthcare and Research fields. In her free time, she loves singing, painting, and spending time with her beloved cat.