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Research updates

Updates on recent accomplishments, publications, awards, presentations, and media coverage involving Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) faculty, PhD students, and research scientists.

Spring 2026

April 17, 2026

Hanna Barakat received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award for her research, Towards a Commons-based Governance of Agentic AI Systems in Agriculture.

Matthew Bilik received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award for his research, Long-Term Community Engagement for AI Governance in Knowledge Work.

Jessica Jarratt received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award for her research, Linking Heavy Metals and Microplastics to Aquatic Ecosystem Health on Vashon-Maury Island.

HCDE was well-represented at the 2026 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026):

Papers

Posters

Workshops

  • Sean Munson with Saskia M Kelders, Iris ten Klooster, Sofia Bastoni, Isabella Cadoni, Kerem Doğan, Hanneke Kip, Nienke Beerlage-de Jong, Ruben Gouveia, Stephen M. Schueller, Bruna Oewel, Kevin Doherty, Guendalina Graffigna, Silvia Gabrielli, Tom Van Daele, Tobias Kowatsch, Gavin Doherty, Qinggang Yu, David Coyle, Olga Perski, Maria Karekla, and Adriana Rios Rincon – Engagement in Digital Health Interventions: Open Questions for Research and Design
  • Emily Tseng with Daniel A. Adler, Ashley Marie Walker, Renee Shelby, Stevie Chancellor, Eugenia Kim, Sachin R Pendse, and Renwen Zhang – Social and Emotional Uses of AI

Katie Arriaga and Gary Hsieh, with co-authors Raina Langevin, Pranuti Kalidindi, Ryan Kyle, Shayla Akande, and Leah M. Marcotte, had a paper, A randomized factorial experiment to optimize the design of a culturally tailored breast cancer screening outreach chatbot intervention, published in Frontiers in Digital Health.

Bingcan Guo, with co-authors Chaoran Chen, Zhiping Zhang, Shang Ma, Ibrahim Khalilov, Simret A Gebreegziabher, Bingsheng Yao, Dakuo Wang, Yanfang Ye, Ziang Xiao, Yaxing Yao, Tianshi Li, and Toby Jia-Jun Li, had a paper, The Obvious Invisible Threat: Vulnerabilities of LLM-Powered GUI Agents to Adversarial UI Manipulations in Web Interaction Tasks, published in the ACM Transactions on AI Security and Privacy.

Shana Lee Hirsch, with co-authors Mark Louie D. Lopez, Yin Cheong Aden Ip, Danial Hariz Zainal Abidin, Danwei Huang, Daphne Z. Hoh, Elfritzson M. Peralta, Harris Wei-Khang Heng, Itchika Sivaipram, Kenneth Xavier O. Sanchez, Maslin Osathanunkul, May Thu Thu Win, Minh Le, Ni Kadek Dita Cahyani, Rebecca Ker Loh, Ruby Vidia Kusumah, Sekar Larashati, Severino Salmo III, Thomas N. E. Gray, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz Allan, and Ryan Kelly, had a paper, Advancing Environmental DNA Applications in Southeast Asia Through Networking, Adaptable Standard Development, and Capacity Building, published in Environmental DNA.

David Ribes, with co-author Eric Monteiro, had a paper, More Instrument than Data, published in Science, Technology, & Human Values.

Gary Hsieh was featured in UW Today in the article, Researchers are designing new ways to translate research into practice. Also mentioned are Lucy Lu Wang, Ruoxi Shang, Ruican Zhong, Donghoon Shin, Hyeonjeong Byeon, Meziah Ruby Cristobal, Alex Chen, and Tony Zhou.

April 3, 2026

Katya Cherukumilli and Co-PIs Catherine Karr, Christine Loftus, Jessica Black, and Allison Sherris, with Stephanie Hung, received a University of Washington Population Health Initiative Tier 2 Pilot Grant in the amount of $65,000 for “Evaluating Wildfire Threats to Drinking Water Systems in Yakima Valley to Inform Intervention Development and Mitigate Public Health Risks.”

David Ribes, with co-authors Geoffrey C. Bowker and Eric Monteiro, had a peer-reviewed book chapter, Parables of circulating reference, published in Aleksi Aaltonen, Marta Stelmaszak, and Kalle Lyytinen (Editors), Research Handbook on Digital Data: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Edward Elgar Publishing).

David Ribes delivered two invited book talks for his forthcoming book, Machineries of Similarity and Difference: AIDS From its Research Infrastructures (MIT Press, 2026). The first was hosted by The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) Department of Bioethics & Health Humanities on March 20, 2026, and the second was hosted by the UC San Diego Science Studies Program’s Science Studies Colloquium Series on March 30, 2026.

David Ribes served as an organizer for the Knowledge of AIDS: Civic Participation and Activism workshop held at the San Diego LGBT Center on March 24-26, 2026. Knowledge of AIDS (KOA) is an NSF-funded Research Community Development (RCD) project that seeks to form scholarly community for social scientific, humanistic, and socio-technical researchers of HIV/AIDS broadly situated within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Brett Halperin was appointed by Governor Bob Ferguson to the Board of Directors of Washington Filmworks as the “member representing technologies impacting WA's emerging motion picture industry.”

Kate Starbird was featured in the Computing Research Association’s post, CRA Congratulates New AAAI, ACM, and IEEE-CS Fellows.

Winter 2026

March 13, 2026

Emily Tseng and Calvin Liang (Northwestern University), with Hanna Barakat, received a Google Academic Research Award (GARA) of $100,000 for “Evaluating Community-Centered and Synthetic Safety Personas with At-Risk Users, Engineers, and Policymakers." Their project will look at whether and how synthetic personas might be appropriate for use in engineering and designing digital safety, through a case study with queer youth.

Hyeonjeong Byeon and Gary Hsieh, with co-author Uran Oh, had a paper, Understanding the Effects of Conversational Agent Personality on the Credibility of LLM-Based Conversational Search, published in the Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR '26).

K. J. Kevin Feng, with co-authors Rock Yuren Pang, Shangbin Feng, Chu Li, Weijia Shi, Yulia Tsvetkov, Jeffrey Heer, and Katharina Reinecke, had a paper, Interactive Reasoning: Visualizing and Controlling Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Large Language Models, published in the Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '26).

Danli Luo, with co-authors Wade Ingram and Andreea Danielescu had a paper, From Piping to Printing: An Action-Based Approach to Computational Food Fabrication, published in the Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '26).

Sean Munson, with co-authors Chi-shan Tsai, HyunHae Lee, Warren Szewczyk, Julia K Palmer, Sophie Putnam, Jaimee L Heffner, Alexi Vasbinder, Amandalynne Paullada, Weichao Yuwen, Kerryn W Reding, had a paper, Exploring Feature Priorities and User Needs in Developing Virtual Study Assistants, published in JMIR Formative Research.

Daniela Rosner had an essay, On Apps and Appliqué, published in e-flux Architecture.

Chenjie Yuan and Ruican Zhong, with co-authors Longjie Guo, Mingyuan Zhong, Robert Wolfe, Yue Xu, Bingbing Wen, Hua Shen, Lucy Lu Wang, and Alexis Hiniker, had a paper, SusBench: An Online Benchmark for Evaluating Dark Pattern Susceptibility of Computer-Use Agents, published in the Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '26).

Brock Craft is featured in the UW Daily article, What is human centered design & engineering?

Kate Starbird is quoted in the Tech Policy Press piece, Despite Using Iranian Meddling to Justify War, Trump Axes Election Defenses.

February 27, 2026

Katya Cherukumilli was awarded $27,500 by the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) for “Assessing lead contamination of drinking water supplies in primary schools and households in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, India.”

Katya Cherukumilli was also awarded $15,000 by the University of Washington Global Innovation Fund (GIF) for “Assessing lead contamination of drinking water supplies in schools and households in India.”

Shana Hirsch, with co-authors Yin Cheong Aden Ip, Pedro F. P. Brandão-Dias, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz Allan, and Ryan Kelly, had a paper, Understanding practical barriers to the global adoption of environmental DNA (eDNA) methods, tools, and standards, published in BMC Research Notes.

Nadya Peek, with co-authors, Harley Quinn, Gregory A. Robben, Zhaoyi Zheng, Jin Yan, Yuanzhi Li, Zhaoji Yang, Maria Politi, Lilo Pozzo, Jörg G. Werner, and Keith A. Brown, had a paper, An automated system for electrodeposition of polymer thin films and their wetting analysis, published in Review of Scientific Instruments.

Yuecheng Peng, with co-authors, Jerry Cao, Hongrui Wu, Yuxuan Miao, Sanjana Satagopan, Runxin Shi, Brier Hehmeyer, Brett Emery, Jeffrey Lipton, Jennifer Mankoff, and Shwetak Patel, had an abstract, Demonstrating SensiPrint: 3D-Printed Soft Foams for Physical Augmentation and Sensing, published in the Adjunct Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF Adjunct '25).

Brett Halperin was a speaker on the roundtable “Interviewing Industry Professionals” organized by the Media Industries SIG of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).

Kate Starbird was:

February 6, 2026

Aayushi Dangol, Akeiylah Dewitt, Julie Kientz, and Sayamindu Dasgupta, with co-authors Robert Wolfe and Ben Chickadel, had a paper, Reading AI and Reading the World: Using an Interactive AI System to Promote Children's Understanding of AI Bias, published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.

Julie Kientz with co-authors Seray Ibrahim, Julia Dabrowski, Alissa N. Antle, Alexandra Chesters, and Petr Slovák, had a paper, Uncovering Parental Struggles: Using Digital Probes to Analyse Challenges in Applying Online Parenting Content, published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.

Nina Lutz and Kate Starbird are quoted in the CNN article, How four faces changed the way many Americans see Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Kate Starbird is quoted in the New York Times article, Nick Shirley, the influencer who spurred the federal crackdown in Minneapolis.

Kate Starbird is quoted in the Christian Science Monitor article, Videos showed Alex Pretti’s death – and undercut the government’s version of events.

January 23, 2026

Kate Starbird has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), one of the most prestigious honors in the computing profession. Dr. Starbird was recognized for her contributions to understanding and improving information ecosystems, including during crisis events and addressing misinformation.

Cecilia Aragon and Kimberly Perkins received a CoMotion Innovation Gap Fund grant of $75,000 in support of “CRMSON: Human Performance Hub.”

Shana Hirsch, with co-authors Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor, Trent Dillon, Pedro C. González-Espinosa, Marcia Moreno-Báez, Mohammad Nasir Tighsazzadeh and Yoshitaka Ota, had a paper, Ocean renewable energy for equitable energy access in a Blue Economy, published in Scientific Reports.

Georgia Kenderova and Sean Munson, with co-author Eleanor Birrell, had a paper, “It’s Always in the Back of My Mind”: Navigating sensitive health data amid reduced abortion rights in the United States, published in the ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare.

Megan Moldestad, with co-authors Sarah Keithly, Paige Perry, Erica J. Ho, Ryan A. Sterling, Soumya Subramaniam, Shaina Coogan, Sarah E. Shirley, George Sayre, Christian Helfrich, Charles Maynard, Catherine P. Kaminetzky, Erin L. Patel, Joseph Chiovaro, Joel Schmidt, Rebecca Stout, Amber Fisher, and Edwin S. Wong, had a paper, The VA Rural Interprofessional Faculty Development Initiative: a qualitative evaluation guided by the RE-AIM framework, published in BMC Medical Education.

Andrew Quitmeyer (HCDE Affiliate Faculty), with co-authors Kit Quitmeyer and Sid Drmay, published the Proceedings of the Third Digital Naturalism Conference about interaction design and field biology.

Donghoon Shin, with co-authors Seojin Hwang, Yumin Kim, Byeongjeong Kim, and Hwanhee Lee, had a paper, Personality Editing for Language Models through Adjusting Self-Referential Queries, accepted to the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2026, main track).

Kate Starbird published a Center for an Informed Public (CIP) blog post, Framing the killing of Renee Nicole Good.

Sourojit Ghosh was quoted in the CNET article, Elon Musk's Grok faces scrutiny over nonconsensual AI-altered 'undressed' images.
 

January 9, 2026

Tyler Fox received supplemental research funding in the amount of $120,000 from Microsoft Customer Experience & Success. This research explores design based competencies in relation to ambiguity and AI.

Emily Tseng, Matthew Bilik, and Amy Zhang received a grant of $25,000 from the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) Innovation Fund for “Building an AI Cooperative With and For Journalists.”

Kyra Arnett, with co-authors Madou Tapsoba, Wamdaogo Moussa Guelbeogo, Antoine Sanou, Soumanaba Zongo, Christelle Gogue, Siaka Debe, Kelly Davis, Jenny Shannon, Peder Digre, Julia Mwesigwa, Kenzie Tynuv, Christen Fornadel, Sagnon N’Falé, Molly Robertson, Joseph D. Challenger, Gauthier Tougri, Adama Gansané, Hilary Ranson, Gnankiné Olivier and Joseph Wagman, had an article, Differential effects of dual and synergist-based insecticide-treated bed nets on pyrethroid resistance and L995F/S knockdown resistance mutation dynamics in Anopheles gambiae s.l. populations in south-western Burkina Faso, published in Parasites & Vectors.

Ruiqi Chen, with co-authors Qingyang He, Hanxi Bao, Jung Choi, and Xin Tong, had an article, GestoBrush: Facilitating Graffiti Artists’ Digital Creation Experiences through Embodied AR Interactions, published in the Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI '25).

Soobin Cho, Anna Lindner, Joseph Schafer, Pitch Sinlapanuntakul, Julie Vera, and Mark Zachry had a poster, Collaborative Autoethnography as a Method to Explore Short-Lived Social AI Chatbots, published in the Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI '25).

Shana Hirsch, with co-authors, Yin Cheong Aden Ip, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz Allan, and Ryan P Kelly, had a article, Fast, Flexible, Feasible: A Transparent Framework for Evaluating eDNA Workflow Trade-offs in Resource-Limited Settings, published in Molecular Ecology Resources.

Ayumi Oishi with co-authors Annuska Zolyomi, LouAnne Boyd, Mizuko (Mimi) Ito, had an article, Exploring HCI Neurodiversity Research in Japan: Lessons Learned in Cross-Cultural Relationship Building and Community-Based Research, published in ACM Interactions.

Kate Starbird, with co-authors Danielle Lee Tomson, Mert Can Bayar, Michael Grass, and Emma Spiro, published Being Sensemakers: A Framework for University-Based Rapid Research of Elections, Crisis Events, and Beyond, a report detailing the 2024 Election Rumor Research Project.

Brett Halperin was interviewed on national television, NewsNation Live, on December 10, 2025, about the future of Hollywood and recent backlash to the creator behind “AI actress” Tilly Norwood.

Nina Lutz was quoted in the Time article, How Christian Leaders Are Challenging the AI Boom.

Kate Starbird was quoted in the NPR article, Pro-Trump influencers take a victory lap amid fallout from viral video alleging fraud.
 

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