I am a PhD researcher co-advised by Prof. Mauro Cherubini from UNIL and Prof. Dinesh Babu Jayagopi from IIIT Bangalore, designing and building tools to help job seekers overcome the challenges of unemployment with a focus on interview training. My research combines Human Computer Interaction, Natural Language Processing, Multimodal Processing and Explainable AI together with insights from psychological theories. I am specifically focused on understanding the impact of automated training systems on job seekers' motivation and performance. Currently, I am exploring novel ways to use and evaluate Explainable AI in feedback and training systems. Broadly, I'm interested in AI explainability and transparency, aiming to enhance individuals' ability to interact with and learn from AI systems, thereby making a tangible impact on them.

I completed my Master's by Research in AI at IIIT Bangalore where my thesis focused on improving and automating asynchronous video interviews using Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Generation, Multimodal Processing. My industry background includes research experience at Accenture Technology Labs and HP Inc R&D Labs working on different NLP problems. Prior to my Master's, I worked at Fidelity Investments for 2 years.

When not working, I enjoy doing the classical dance form of Kathak and getting to know about zero-waste / sustainable practices.

Publications

  1. Kavous S. Niksirat, Lahari Goswami, Pooja Rao, James Tyler, Alessandro Silacci, Sadiq Aliyu, Annika Aebil, Chat Wacharamanotham, Mauro Cherubini, “ Changes in Research Ethics, Openness, and Transparency in Empirical Studies between CHI 2017 and CHI 2022. ” ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23) 2023.

    🏆 Best Paper Award (Top 1%)

  2. Pooja Rao, Dinesh B. Jayagopi and Mauro Cherubini, “Explainability in Automated Training and Feedback Systems.” ACM CHI Workshop Human-Centered Perspectives in Explainable AI (HCXAI) 2022.
  3. Jinal Hitesh Thakkar, Pooja Rao, Kumar Shubham, Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Understanding Interviewees’ Perceptions and Behaviour towards Verbally and Non-verbally Expressive Virtual Interviewing Agents.” Companion Publication of the 2022 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2022.
  4. Vibhav Agarwal, Pooja Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Towards Code-Mixed Hinglish Dialogue Generation.” 3rd Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Conversational AI (NLP4ConvAI) held with EMNLP 2021
  5. Pooja Rao, Manish Agnihotri and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Improving Asynchronous Interview Interaction with Follow-up Question Generation.” International Journal of Interactive Multimedia & Artificial Intelligence (IJIMAI) 2021.
  6. Pooja Rao, Manish Agnihotri and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Incorporating Automatic Follow-up Question Generation for Asynchronous Interviews.” Workshop on Intelligent Information Processing and Natural Language Generation, ECAI, 2020.
  7. Pooja Rao, Sowmya Rasipuram, Rahul Das, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Automatic Assessment of Communication Skill in Non-conventional Interview Settings: A Comparative Study.” 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2017
  8. Sowmya Rasipuram, Rahul Das, Pooja Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Online Peer-to-Peer Discussions: A Platform for Automatic Assessment of Communication Skill.” Seventh International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW) 2017
  9. Sowmya Rasipuram, Pooja Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Automatic Prediction of Fluency in Interface-Based Interviews.” In India Conference (INDICON) 2016 IEEE
  10. Sowmya Rasipuram, Pooja Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Asynchronous Video Interviews vs. Face-to-Face Interviews for Communication Skill Measurement: A Systematic Study.” 18th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2016.

    🏆 Nominated for Best Student Paper

Updates

  1. 07/2023: Invited talk on our CHI 2023 paper “Changes in Research Ethics, Openness, and Transparency in Empirical Studies between CHI 2017 and CHI 2022” at the Nokia Bells Lab, Cambridge. You can find the talk here.
  2. 04/2023: Our paper “Changes in Research Ethics, Openness, and Transparency in Empirical Studies between CHI 2017 and CHI 2022” has received the Best Paper Best Paper recognition at ACM CHI 2023
  3. 11/2022: Volunteered for ICMI 2022 that happened in Bangalore, India.
  4. 08/2022: Our paper "Understanding Interviewees' Perceptions and Behaviour to Verbally and Non-verbally Expressive Virtual Interviewing Agents" accepted at workshop GENEA organized in conjunction with ICMI 2022
  5. 05/2022: Presented our opinion paper "Explainability in Automated Training and Feedback Systems" ACM CHI Workshop HCXAI 2022. You can find the talk here.
  6. 04/2022: Our opinion paper "Explainability in Automated Training and Feedback Systems" accepted at ACM CHI Workshop Human-Centered Perspectives in Explainable AI HCXAI 2022
  7. 03/2022: Volunteered for AMLD 2022 that happened in Lausanne, Switzerland.
  8. 04/2021: Successfully conducted the workshop “Virtual Interviewer: Build your own interviewing agent” at AMLD 2021. You can find all the resources in this repo!
  9. 02/2021: Our paper "Improving Asynchronous Interview Interaction with Follow-up Question Generation" has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence (Special Issue Extended Papers ECAI)
  10. 02/2021: Our workshop “Virtual Interviewer: Build your own interviewing agent” is scheduled on April 27th from 14:00 to 17:00. Find more details here!
  11. 12/2020: Conducted a hands-on session "Procedure Detection" for R V College of Engineering
  12. 12/2020: Our workshop proposal “Virtual Interviewer: Build your own interviewing agent” accepted at AMLD 2021
  13. 11/2020: Our paper "Towards Generating Topic-driven and Affective Responses to assist Mental Wellness" accepted at CARE 2020 organized in conjunction with ICPR2020
  14. 09/2020: Presented our paper "Incorporating Automatic Follow-up Question Generation for Asynchronous Interviews" IntelLang 2020 (slides)
  15. 09/2020: Joined University of Lausanne as a PhD student
  16. 06/2020: Our paper "Incorporating Automatic Follow-up Question Generation for Asynchronous Interviews" accepted at IntelLanG workshop co-located with ECAI 2020

Master Thesis

Work towards adding automated elements to asynchronous interview systems by solving the problems of interview follow-up question generation and automatic assessment of candidates using various Machine Learning techniques like text generation, text classification and transfer learning techniques for NLP.

  • Automatic Follow-up Question Generation – enable a virtual interviewer to generate a follow-up question given a predetermined question and a candidate response using LSTM-based and Transformer models. (View demo)
  • Automatic Assessment of Communication Skill – Supervised predictive models to assess the written communication skill scores of interview candidates in various non-conventional interview settings. (View thesis and defense slides)