@plopesresearch

Assoc. Prof. of Comp. Science @uchicagocs / Human Computer Integration Lab / XR, haptics, hw / HCI lab: https://xitter.cf/t.co/lNuu6qMtRX / music: https://xitter.cf/t.co/XcUgF18GAu

 Chicago, IL
plopes.org
Joined December 2010
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  • Followers9.1K
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Text or video is not only form AI can take. In embodied-ai.tech (#CHI2026, Best Paper 🏆) we create an embodied AI that acts via muscle stimulation to perform physical tasks: e.g., place a bike on a bus rack and more! youtube.com/watch?v=pJM2Z8mm… by @yun_yh_ @romainnith
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👏 👏👏 @IEEEVR is setting up the reviewer's UIs nicely! Nice scoring system (a Likert scale w/ options from 1 to 8, #CHI2028 wink wink) and love the "Write here the helpful review you would like to receive as an author", beautiful reminder just before folks click send!
Screenshot of PCS that says write the review you wished to get as a author.

ALT Screenshot of PCS that says write the review you wished to get as a author.

Screenshot of PCS with options to accept to reject from 8 to 1. Likert scale.

ALT Screenshot of PCS with options to accept to reject from 8 to 1. Likert scale.

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Update for the age of LLMs: make sure to retain your unique voice. LLMs tend to generate text that seems smooth and sophisticated, but reads shallow and meaningless to experts. It is also very easy to see patterns that emerge.
Hadas Kress-Gazit 🪷@HadasKressGazit15 Nov 2021
Writing a statement of purpose (SOP) for PhD admissions – please do not make me read another “as a kid, when I looked at the sky…” a thread.
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The more you automate, the less you see: Hidden pitfalls of autonomous AI scientists | PNAS pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26…

The more you automate, the less you see: Hidden pitfalls of autonomous AI scientists | PNAS

The rapid rise of autonomous AI scientists marks a paradigm shift in scientific discovery by automating the research lifecycle. Yet their rushed de...

pnas.org
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Pedro Lopes retweeted
Earl K. Miller@MillerLabMITOct 22
Lossy compression when items are chunked in working memory. Chunking: What working memory gains and loses cell.com/current-biology/abs… #neuroscience

Chunking: What working memory gains and loses

Chunking compresses information into fewer meaningful units, reducing working memory demands. During chunking, neural representations in the prefrontal cortex exhibit reduced dimensionality and are...

cell.com
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Here is what all fields look like for PhD production based on Survey of Earned Doctorates. Since 2015 (shaded part), humanities and arts are down, but so are business, education, social sciences (non-psych). On the whole, PhD production continues to rise.
Jay Van Bavel, PhD
@jayvanbavelOct 21
The number of people writing dissertations in the humanities has collapses, now the same thing is happening in the social sciences. I'd wager that we will see a similar trend in psychology and other fields before long. Cuts in funding, the tight academic job market, and AI are rapidly changing the university and cratering graduate programs.
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Steve McGuire
@sfmcguire79Oct 22
How bad is administrative bloat in higher ed? At MIT, the “student body has grown by 8% and its faculty by 9% since the mid-1980s. By comparison, the tally of administrators jumped by 189%.”
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Some wisdom for #CHI2027 reviewers. Value those exciting papers with fresh insights, even if they have a minor flaw (most papers that you now consider classics have tons of those minor flaws!).
Thao Nguyen (Shibe)@thaoshibeOct 20
after 5 years being reviewers for cvpr, neurips, iclr i feel "safe" paper is most likely to be accepted "safe" = valid questions, sufficient experiment remind me of Bill Freeman's slide, it's "Cockroach": everywhere, nothing too exciting... (a bit annoying) yet hard to kill 🥲
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Using brain imaging to study the spinal cord! For 400 years, we’ve used telescopes to look up. Now, sharpening faint fMRI signals is letting us look within. For 8 years, researchers told Nawal Kinany she was wasting her time. "The spinal cord is a tube. Why do you want to look at that?" But evidence now proves the cord isn't just a passive message cable—it performs neural processing of its own. Unlocking this hidden railway is paving the way for breakthrough treatments in paralysis and stroke. actu.epfl.ch/news/using-brai… #Neuroscience #EPFL #NeuroRestore #fMRI #SpinalCord #NeuroTech #ActiveInference #SpinalCord #EmbodiedCognition #MedicalInnovation #Medicine

Using brain imaging to study the spinal cord

Several EPFL labs are converging around an idea that began as a doctoral researcher’s hunch: the spinal cord revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging might unlock new therapies.

actu.epfl.ch
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Pedro Lopes retweeted
Lucy Li@lucy3_liOct 21
We are hiring!! "Artificial intelligence, broadly construed. This includes embodied AI and robotics, machine learning and the systems that support it, and AI developed for problems in science, engineering, medicine, education, and society." jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assistant…

Assistant / Associate / Full Professor of Computer Sciences - Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Reg...

jobs.wisc.edu
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The 2026 Marylyn C. Grabosky Symposium in Psychology and Neuroscience is coming up next week! The symposium will feature research talks, a poster session, and the Grabosky Lecture presented by Associate Professor Monica Rosenberg, PhD. RSVP here: uchicagosocialsciencesdivisi…
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Yudai Tanaka@_yudaitanakaOct 21
Interested in a PhD in HCI at UT Austin CS? Meet us at #UIST2026! Join Karthik Mahadevan (@karthikm0), Michelle Lam (@michelle123lam), and me to chat about research and ask questions about PhD applications. Our interests span a range of technical HCI areas (see the flyer). RSVP: forms.gle/a5oFnbDhV9meJ7Fz5 🗓️: Tuesday, November 3, from 3:30 PM (during the afternoon coffee break) 📍: Renaissance Foyer East, Renaissance Center Looking forward to meeting you!
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📣 We’re hiring at Notre Dame CSE! ☘️ Tenure-track/tenured position in Ethics & Computing Exciting opportunities to pursue ambitious research, make real-world impact, and shape the future of tech and human flourishing. LMK for any questions Apply: apply.interfolio.com/195819
🤖 Made with AI
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ANUP DAS@NeuroAnupOct 16
Thank you @UChicago_Brains for supporting our work!! Check out our other work describing the computational biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/… and functional relevance of these complex traveling waves biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…!! #neuroscience #waves

Hidden Spirals Underlie Cortical Traveling Waves

Neural traveling waves exhibit diverse spatial patterns, but the neural dynamics that generate them remain unknown. Here, we asked whether the apparent diversity of traveling waves reflects distinct...

biorxiv.org
University of Chicago Neuroscience Institute@UChicago_BrainsOct 16
Study led by Professor Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das measured traveling waves of neural activity and found that different behavioral tasks were associated with distinct wave patterns. Read more: quantamagazine.org/surprisin…

Surprisingly Complex Waves Reveal the Brain’s Inner Workings | Quanta Magazine

Unexpected patterns traveling across the human brain may be reorganizing its activity in real time.

quantamagazine.org
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Great conference! (And now a maybe even better time of the year for it)
Cedric Honnet@CedHonOct 19
🚀 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗛𝗖𝗜 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟳 will be 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟭𝟵-𝟮𝟲!! (Shenzhen) - Industry Immersion: Scaling research with factory markets + manufacturer visits! - Conference Classics: Research talks, demos, hackathon, workshops... 🔗ScalableHCI.com
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Learning physics (as in physical behaviour) with a physical force based interface feels great, well done!
T. Scott Saponas@saponasOct 18
Our summer intern at Microsoft Research, Elizabeth Childs, led an incredible project building a haptic robot for teaching topics where it helps to FEEL the physics. Checkout the video! youtu.be/JxwKrtG6HAw?is=0xlP…

KITE: a Kinesthetic Interface for Tangible Exploration

KITE, a Kinesthetic Interface for Tangible Exploration, is a tangib...

youtube.com
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Pedro Lopes retweeted
Itai Yanai
@ItaiYanaiOct 17
Using AI to write for you - start to finish - is really just you robbing yourself of one of life’s greatest joys: to think through a problem and figure out what you think about it, and in the process becoming passionate enough to take on the new challenge of solving it.
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Such an important reminder. Review what people wrote (past tense here intentional), not what you would have written in their shoes.
Upol Ehsan@UpolEhsanOct 15
Replying to @UpolEhsan
Review this version of the manuscript. Review the paper the authors set out to write, not the one you would've written.
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If you are attending Ubicomp/IMWUT 2026 go watch this talk and talk with @tangemicioglu ! You won't regret it. #ubicomp2026
Tan Gemicioglu@tangemiciogluOct 14
Replying to @tangemicioglu
Read the paper here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/38316… Or on arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2609.09700 I am presenting this paper at @ubicomp 2026 this week. Thanks to my collaborators @jas_x_flowers, @plopesresearch , @tanzeemc for their support of this project!

AppetiteCheck: Feasibility of Momentary Vagus Nerve Stimulation as an Implicit Intervention for...

Overeating and emotional eating are common health issues that affect people even without an eating disorder. The vagus nerve plays a critical role in the gut-brain axis, and implanted vagus nerve...

dl.acm.org
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Read the paper here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/38316… Or on arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2609.09700 I am presenting this paper at @ubicomp 2026 this week. Thanks to my collaborators @jas_x_flowers, @plopesresearch , @tanzeemc for their support of this project!

AppetiteCheck: Feasibility of Momentary Vagus Nerve Stimulation as an Implicit Intervention for...

Overeating and emotional eating are common health issues that affect people even without an eating disorder. The vagus nerve plays a critical role in the gut-brain axis, and implanted vagus nerve...

dl.acm.org
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New paper by @tangemicioglu (Cornell) using vagus nerve stimulation for appetitive control (yes, worked well against placebo/sham!). Very exciting work and thanks for letting me be a part of it too. Read it: tangemicioglu.com/files/pape…
Tan Gemicioglu@tangemiciogluOct 14
Replying to @tangemicioglu
The vagus nerve is the highway for carrying messages between your brain and gut. AppetiteCheck stimulates it electrically when you are eating, amplifying the body's rest-and-digest response.
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