

People

Current Members
Faculty
Kenneth D. Forbus
- Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Education
- Chair of the Cognitive Systems Division/Department of EECS
Tom Hinrichs
- Research Associate Professor
Staff
Carrie Ost
- Program Assistant
Jenn Stedillie
- Research Study Programs Coordinator II
- Webmaster of Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center: an NSF Science of Learning Center
Jeffrey Usher
- Senior Software Developer
- Currently involved in the SILC program developing CogSketch; I've also been involved in many QRG projects, including nuSketch, sKEA, and Companions. Interests include spatial reasoning, human/computer interaction, and digital assistants.
Graduate Students
David Barbella
- more info coming soon
Christopher Blair
- more info coming soon
Maria Chang
- Maria's research interests include AI applications in education, spatial learning and diagrammatic reasoning. She is a member of the CogSketch team, where she works on improving coaching and tutoring within CogSketch and exploring new sketch-based intelligent tutoring systems. Maria joined QRG in Fall 2009.
Scott Friedman
- I'm interested in creating systems that learn and revise conceptual knowledge. This involves recognizing and reasoning about anomalies, uncertainty, justifications, contradictions, and explanations. I'm also interested in utilizing these computational methodologies to create a cognitive model of conceptual change.
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Balasubramanian ("Subu") Kandaswamy
- Subu joined QRG in fall 2010. He is interested in doing research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and psychology. He is currently investigating cognitive models of how children learn relational abstractions.
Andrew Lovett
- I am interested in cognitive modeling in the domains of analogy, perception, and spatial reasoning.
Matt McLure
- I want to investigate what it would take for a cognitive architecture to participate in robust concept learning through long-term, multi-modal interaction. To this end, I am particularly interested in active learning techniques, flexible representation schemes, re-representation strategies, and sketch understanding. I have been with QRG since the fall of 2009, and I am involved in the Freeciv, Companions, and CogSketch projects.
Jason Taylor
- Jason graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. His areas of interest are natural language understanding, causal reasoning, and both goal-directed and spontaneous creative cognition. He is currently investigating modeling conceptual design as it is employed by engineers in the design of dynamical systems.
Jon Wetzel
- Jon Wetzel joined QRG in the Fall of 2007, and is researching sketch understanding and qualitative reasoning to create intelligent coaching software that can understand and critique sketches of engineering designs. He works with the NSF Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center to use the CogSketch platform to create a "Design Buddy" for Northwestern's Engineering Design and Communication program.
Visitors
Frank Leenaars, University of Twente
- Visiting Student
- Past Visitors
Tomoya Horiguchi, Kobe University
- Visiting Researcher, Fall 2010 through Summer 2011
Undergraduates
Affiliated Faculty
Larry Birnbaum, Professor of Computer Science
Dedre Gentner, Professor of Psychology
Chris Riesbeck, Professor of Computer Science

Alumni
Arun Ahuja
Julie Baher
James Baker, EECS
Thomas Bittner
Mike Brokowski
Karen Elizabeth Carney
Vernell Chapman
John Collins
Jonathan Davis
Dennis DeCoste
Morteza Dehghani
- PhD, December 2009
Kevin Dill
Greg Dunham
Patricia Dyck
John Everett, ALPHATECH Inc.
Brian Falkenhainer
Boi Faltings
Ronald W. Ferguson, Georgia Tech
Daniel Halstead
- PhD, September 2011
Philip Houk
Matthew Klenk
- Phd, June 2009
Sven Kuehne
- PhD, June 2004
Hyeon Kyeong Kim
Kate Lockwood
- PhD, December 2009
- Assistant Professor, California State University-Monterey Bay
Joyce Ma
Clifton McFate
- QRG Undergraduate
Cara J. Meverden
Paul Nielsen
Praveen Paritosh
- PhD, December 2007
Yusuf Pisan
Abhishek Sharma
- Abhishek graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2005. He joined Northwestern in the fall of 2005. He worked on the Learning by Reading project. He successfully defended his dissertation: Structural and Network-Based Methods for Knowledge-Based Systems PDF of announcement
Nikitas Sgouros
Emmett Tomai
- Phd, December 2009
Leo C. Ureel II
Jin Yan
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