News
2026 6
Empower Lab at CHI 2026
The Empower Lab has a lot to celebrate at CHI 2026 in Yokohama, Japan! Sprout receives an Honorable Mention Award . Sprout uses a visual metaphor to support customizable and…
Dylan passes his PhD thesis defense!
Congratulations to Dylan Moore for successfully defending his PhD thesis, "Augmenting Sensemaking in Dementia Care and Education through AI-enabled 'Narrative Stewardship'"!…
Emma accepted into the Dartmouth Innovation Accelerator for Digital Health (DIADH) 2026!
Congratulations to Emma Ricci-De Lucca for being accepted into the Dartmouth Innovation Accelerator for Digital Health (DIADH) 2026 cohort! DIADH supports interdisciplinary…
Jenna selected as Neukom Scholar for Spring 2026
Congrats to Jenna Sheldon who was awarded a Neukom Scholarship for the Spring 2026 quarter for her senior thesis project aimed at using wearable sensors to computationally assess…
Liz presents at the SYNERGY series
On Thursday February 12, 2026 @ 12:00-1:00pm, Liz will present our work to develop AI tools for person-centered dementia care. More info about the talk is here…
Sonny passes his CS PhD Thesis Proposal
2025 23
Emma receives award at MedTech Conference
Emma received a trophy for "Most applicable to rural healthcare" business model poster at a MedTech event for her work in maternal health technology. More details about Emma's…
Emma advances to PhD candidacy
Emma passed her PhD Oral Examination and was reviewed by the Thayer MS/PhD Committee. The faculty voted during the October 1, 2025 faculty meeting to admit her to PhD Candidacy…
Liz and Emma present at inaugural DCIS summit
Liz and Emma presented their work at the inaugural Dartmouth Implementation Science (DCIS) Symposium. The event brought together researchers and practitioners to discuss new…
Emma travels to Garmin Health Summit
Emma attended the 2025 Garmin Health Summit , held on September 17–18 in New York City 🗽. The annual summit brings together leaders, innovators, and researchers exploring…
Liz Named Project Leader on $12M NIH COBRE Grant
We’re excited to share that Liz is one of the project leaders on a new $12 million NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant awarded to Dartmouth’s Geisel School…
New IMWUT publication on our MusicalPT system
We're excited to share our latest publication entitled MusicalPT: Augmenting Physical Therapy by Integrating Adaptive Musical Guidance to Enhance Exercise Quality and Patient…
IASDR 2025 submission accepted
Congratulations to Liz and the Empower Lab team on the acceptance of their paper, “Integrating Sustainability into a Large Manufacturer’s Product Development with…
Vafa passes RPE
Congratulations to Vafa on successfully passing her RPE ! 🎉 This milestone marks an important step in her PhD journey and reflects the rigor, creativity, and dedication she brings…
Dylan presents at learnersourcing workshop
Empower Lab member Dylan presented his research at the Learnersourcing: Student-Generated Content @ Scale workshop, part of the Learning @ Scale 2025 conference in Palermo 🇮🇹…
Sid joins SharkNinja
Sid has joined SharkNinja after completing his MS degree at Thayer. Congratulations, Sid!
Dylan wins first place in vibe coding hackathon
Dylan took home first place at Vibe Hacks 2025 , a generative AI–focused hackathon hosted by Crew Capital , AWS , and Rilla . The competition challenged participants to build…
Liz Wins 2025 Canvy award
Congratulations to Liz for being honored with a 2025 Canvy Award for her course ENGS 021: Introduction to Engineering ! 🎓✨ Each year, Dartmouth students recognize Canvas sites…
Emma passes her Oral Qualifying Exams
Emma, a 2nd year PhD Student, presented her literature-based oral qualifying exam and passed! She is now a Thayer PhD Candidate. Professors Liz Murnane, Ryan Halter, Sarah Lord…
Emma attends the 2025 CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women in Denver, CO.
The conference consisted of sessions on imposter syndrome, practical tips on publishing, and workshops on presentation and communication skills. The Computing Research…
Liz participates in the AI and Student Mental Health Symposium
Liz participated as a panelist at the AI and Student Mental Health Symposium hosted by the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (CTBH).
Dylan presents at MOS
Dylan presented his research at the Management of Science (MOS) session during Thayer's Research in Progress events.
Emma presents at BME poster session
As part of the yearly Research In Progress (RIP) symposium at the Thayer School of Engineering, Emma presented on the Maternal Mental Health project and her ongoing formative…
Dylan passes his thesis proposal
Dylan successfully passed his thesis proposal on March 10, 2025. Congratulations, Dylan!
Emma attends NSBE conference
Emma, alongside Nicole Chora, was chosen to represent Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth at the NSBE2025 Annual Convention Career Fair in Chicago.
Liz presents Somatic Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention for Rural Teens with Anxiety
https://mailchi.mp/dartmouth/dcis-february-2025-works-in-progress
Shirin’s Mad in America Article on Mental Health App Risks Is Now Live
https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/01/can-your-smartphone-diagnose-depression-the-hidden-risks-of-mental-health-apps/
Songyun's Wayfair Internship
Thrilled to share that Songyun has accepted an internship at Wayfair 🎉 ! Excited to see the impact he’ll make—congrats, Songyun!
MatterPD launches!
We are excited to announce the launch of MatterPD , a web-based tool developed in collaboration with EarthShift Global! MatterPD builds on the work of our EcoSketch project to…
2024 25
Allen passes his Qualifying Exam
Committee members include Profs. Joelle Ferron, Wesley Marrero, Gene Santos, and Liz Murnane.
Lab receives shoutout in article about RealVision project
Collaborator Karen Fortuna, lead of the RealVision project, was recently featured in a spread about our collaboration to develop smartphone-based diagnostics to identify early…
Vafa attends CSCW 2024
Vafa attended CSCW 2024 in Costa Rica to student volunteer and to support her co-author Aishwarya Chandrashekar in presenting their paper: Chandrasekaran, A., Currano, R., Batool…
Dylan and Emma welcome new PhD Innovation cohort
Dylan and Emma welcomed the new cohort of PhD Innovation Fellows at Dartmouth.
Dylan wins 2023 CTBH poster prize
https://www.c4tbh.org/summitposters2023/
Allen is awarded Alumni Research Award
Allen Song has been awarded the Guarini Alumni Award to support his research on designing artificial intelligence technologies to support school psychologists in K-12 education…
Dylan passes his Qualifying Exam
We’re thrilled to share that Dylan has successfully passed his PhD qualifying exam 🎉. This milestone marks an important step in his research journey and academic growth. The…
Emma designs Roche & Genentech’s Award Video
Roche and Genentech has been recognized by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) for elevating women’s healthcare worldwide with the 2024 ACE Aspire Award. This award…
NAM Catalyst Award received for research on music-based interventions
We have received a Catalyst Award from the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) for our proposal "Designing Music-Based Interventions for Aging-Related Pain: Sonifying Body Movement…
Empower Lab hosts annual retreat for new academic year
Prof. Murnane, Dylan, Emma, Pape, Shirin, Sid, and Vafa get together for team bonding activities in the local Upper Valley community.
Jonathan defends MS thesis
https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/events/ms-thesis-defense-jonathan-bonilla-toledo
Vafa awarded Phillips Family Student Professional Development Internship award.
Vafa awarded Phillips Family Student Professional Development Internship award to support her attendance at CSCW 2024
Songyun passes his Research Presentation Exam
Committee members include Profs. Michael Casey, Soroush Vasoughi, and Liz Murnane.
Hannah passes her Qualifying Exam
Committee members include Profs. Lynn Fiellin, Liz Murnane, James O'Malley, and Nick Jacobson.
Empower Lab wins 2022 Thayer Fitness Challenge!
The Empower Lab team won the 2022 Thayer Fitness Challenge!
Vafa's CHI 2024 paper for the Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual Workshop
You can read her paper on "Weight Bias in Design: Unpacking Implicit Researcher Beliefs for Building Empathy" at https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3661790.3661799.
Empower Lab attends the CHI 2024 Conference
Dylan, Emma, Hannah, Shirin, Sid, Songyun, Vafa, Liz and Empower Lab collaborators attended the 2024 ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in…
Paper appearing at CHI 2024
Moore, Dylan Edward, et al. "Teaching artificial intelligence in extracurricular contexts through narrative-based learnersourcing." Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human…
Vafa accepted to attend CRA-WP 2024
Vafa was accepted to attend the 2024 Grad Cohort for Women in Minneapolis, hosted by the Computing Research Association's Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research…
Empower Lab participates in Engineering Open House
Come say hi to Empower Lab members and try out our demos at the 2024 Engineering Open House! More info at https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/events/open-house-2024.
Shirin awarded Centers Forum at Dartmouth Grant
The Centers Forum at Dartmouth funds proposals for creative programming that address the 2023-2024 theme: Uncommon Collaborations: Dialogue Across Difference.
Emma receives Neukom Institute for Computational Science Travel Grant
Emma receives $1000 to attend CHI 2024 conference and participate in the PhysioCHI workshop. These grants, awarded to excellent and deserving proposals are available to students…
Dom accepted as a SEPA mentor
Dom has been accepted as a grad mentor in the Dartmouth's Rural STEM Educator Partnership program, which is supported through a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA). Mentors'…
The lab has finalized its t-shirt design for 2024!
Shout out to Sid for the graphic design!
Emma contributes to “Creating a Vision of Women-Centric Cancer Care” White Paper
During the 2023 [FemTechnology Summit](https://femtechnology.org/women-centric-cancer-care/) at Roche in Basel, Switzerland, a band of innovators (i.e., femtech founders…
2023 24
Sid receives Hopkins Art Integration Grant for EvocativeVR Project
EvocativeVR is a Virtual Reality (VR) platform designed to support creative, emotionally therapeutic practices. It empowers users to dynamically externalize and process emotions…
Empower Lab hosts Winterim game day
Led by Sid Patil, the Empower Lab will host a game day on December 5, 2023. More details about this event and other Winterim activities are available here…
Dylan receives his MEM degree from Thayer
Dyan completed his Masters of Engineering Management (MEM) degree at Dartmouth, specializing in Human-AI Interaction.
Shirin & Dylan presented posters at the Dartmouth Center for Technology and Behavioral Health Digital Health Summit
To help shape a vision for making digital therapeutics accessible to all, the [Clinically-Validated Digital Therapeutics: Innovations in Scientific Discovery, Clinical…
Emma designs White Paper with Hera Biotech Startup
Emma collaborates to publish landscape, pharmacoeconomics, and patient journey report on endometriosis and fertility, "The Labyrinth Unwound: A New Paradigm in Endometriosis and…
Vafa attends Grace Hopper Celebration
Vafa Batool attended the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), the world's largest gathering of women and non-binary technologists. GHC brings together researchers, practitioners, and…
Shirin attending the Patient Experience Symposium
Shirin is traveling to Boston to attend the 7th annual Patient Experience Symposium. The conference brings together leading stakeholders from across healthcare, all to improve…
Emma is welcomed into Dartmouth’s PhD Innovation Cohort
Dartmouth’s PhD Innovation Program Fellows met for a reception to welcome the new Fellows. These grad students learn entrepreneurial and business skills while also doing…
Empower Lab receives Prouty grant
The Empower Lab's Weight & Wellness team has been awarded a Prouty Pilot grant for their proposal "Inclusive patient education materials and medical provider/staff training to…
NSF Engines Semifinalist
Professors Liz Murnane, Vikrant Vaze, and Wesley Marrero are lead faculty on a team selected as one of 34 semifinalists for the inaugural NSF Regional Innovation Engines…
Liz hoods Teja at Thayer Investiture 2023
Liz hooded Teja at the Thayer School of Engineering Investiture ceremony in 2023, celebrating Teja's completion of her PhD.
Pape walks in Guarini Investiture 2023
Pape participated in the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies Investiture ceremony in 2023, celebrating the completion of his MS degree.
Triple Helix pop-up exhibition at AVA gallery
https://avagallery.org/event/pop-up-exhibition-dartmouth-computer-science-graduate-students/
Daniel successfully defends his undergraduate thesis
Daniel has successfully defended his senior thesis, "The Dilemma of Disclosure: Designing Interpersonal Informatics Tools for Mood Tracking."
Dom's local STEM outreach
Dom helped to run a workshop at the Montshire Museum to help children learn forensic science as part of a pretend jewel heist. Full story here…
Pape passes MS thesis defense!
A big shout-out to Pape for his successful thesis defense on using metaphors to visualize and support customizable and collaborative health tracking! Committee members included…
Dom defends his MS thesis!
Congratulations to Dom for successfully completing his MS thesis, "A Political Theory of Engineered Systems and A Study of Engineering and Justice Workshops." Committee members…
Teja defends her PhD thesis!
Kudos to Teja for passing her thesis on integrating sustainable design frameworks and life cycle assessment tools in product development! Committee members included Profs. Jeremy…
Dylan is awarded "Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher"
Dylan was recognized with the Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher award at Thayer School of Engineering.
Arts Integration grant received for Triple Helix project
Xuedan Zou, Kyle Huang, and Ziang Ren were awarded an Arts Integration grant from the Hopkins Center for their project "Triple Helix: AI-Artist-Audience Collaboration in a…
Shirin awarded Leslie Center for the Humanities Student Research Fellowship
Leslie Center Student Research Fellowship offers students a unique opportunity to undertake creative projects at the intersection of humanities and other disciplines.
Dylan visits collaborators at University of Colorado Boulder
Dylan had the chance to visit our collaborators Prof. Clayton Lewis, Prof. Steve Voida, and members of Steve's lab.
Lab members participate in digital health accelerator
Lab members are participating in the digital health accelerator. More at https://www.c4tbh.org/accelerator/ and https://www.c4tbh.org/center-highlight/diadhawards/. The focus is on…
Longitudinal deployment of the WhoIsZuki system accepted at IMWUT 2023
More info about the paper is here .
2022 9
Teja receives an Irving Institute mini-grant to attend GreenBiz'23
https://irving.dartmouth.edu/news/2023/01/recent-irving-institute-student-grant-awardees
Andra passes her undergraduate thesis defense
Hats off to Andra for her achievement in passing her thesis, "Enhancing Product Development with Sustainable Design and Life Cycle Assessment."
Lab is winner in 2022 Healthy Longevity Challenge
For our research on music-based interventions for healthy aging, the Empower Lab has been named as one of five awardees in the National Academy of Medicine Healthy Longevity 2022…
Graduate Fellowships Workshop
Will Scheideler, Wesley Marrero, Liz Murnane, and Thayer Career Services are hosting a workshop about graduate fellowships on September 13, 2022. The workshop will cover how to…
Liz presents at 2022 Digital Health Summit
At this year's Digital Therapeutics Summit hosted by the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (CTBH) and Dartmouth's Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship, Liz presented a…
Bryton accepts job at EarthShift
https://earthshiftglobal.com/blog/bryton-moeller-brings-human-centered-design-skills-to-the-earthshift-global-team
Catherine passes senior thesis defense
Congratulations to Catherine for her successful defense of her senior thesis titled "Designing Narrative-Based Interfaces for Collective Action: A Case Study Using Amazon, Climate…
Lab receives Neukom CompX grant
Our proposal "Building Children's AI Literacy through Play-based Educational Technologies" has received a Neukom CompX grant! More info about our proposal and other awardees is…
Dom receives Irving mini-grant for his proposal "Exploring the Importance and Design of Intrinsically Valuable Electric Power Systems"
https://irving.dartmouth.edu/research/funding-students/complete-list-student-grant-projects-and-activities
2021 5
Dylan wins Graduate Student Scholarship from Armenian Professional Society
https://www.armenianprofessionalsociety.org/aps-scholarships-recipients.html
Teja receives Thayer Diversity and Inclusion award
At the 2021 Investiture, Teja Chatty together with Amy Keeler received Thayer's inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Award. Congrats, Teja! Watch Teja receive the award at…
Liz appears in spread on new Dartmouth faculty
Dartmouth News has a feature welcoming incoming faculty, including their reflections on how creativity drives their research and teaching. Article at…
StoryCoder accepted at CHI 2021 and receives honorable mention award
Our paper with Stanford collaborators about voice-based interfaces that use storytelling as a vehicle to teach computational thinking concepts to young children will appear at CHI…
Luce fellowships available for sophomore or junior women in engineering
Attention sophomore and junior women! The engineering department still has Luce fellowships available, which can sponsor your research with our lab. The fellowship covers 3 terms…
2020 15
Teja presenting virtually at DESIGN 2020
Our paper with Stanford collaborators on people's experiences with physical self-tracking materials is now out in the IMWUT (Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous…
Teja virtually attending VERGE
Teja is virtually headed to [VERGE 2020](https://events.greenbiz.com/events/verge-conference/online/2020), taking part in various online sessions such as roundtable discussions…
Liz featured as one of 11 faculty named to endowed chairs
Dartmouth News has featured Liz and her endowed appointment to the Charles H. Gaut and Charles A. Norberg Assistant Professorship, which she's incredibly honored to receive…
National Academy of Sciences chapter now available
The NAS Mobile Technology for Adaptive Aging report has been published! Liz contributed a chapter on mobile and sensor technology.
Hana Ba-Sabaa awarded a Junior Research Scholarship
Hana has been selected as a Junior Research Scholar (https://students.dartmouth.edu/ugar/research/programs/sophomore-and-junior-research-scholars) to support her research with our…
Liz featured in Thayer News as a new faculty member
Thayer News has a feature on Liz joining the Engineering Faculty! Article [here](https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/news/elizabeth-murnane-joins-dartmouth-engineering-faculty).
Catherine Parnell named a Clare Boothe Luce Scholar
Catherine has been awarded a Luce Fellowship, which will support her research with our group through 3 terms of funding plus a research stipend. Congratulations Catherine.
Synapse e-book released
A culmination of her efforts during her Synapse internship and beyond, Teja has co-authored an e-book on Sustainable Product Design! The e-book abstracts a sustainable design…
DartmouthCHI event will showcase papers by Dartmouth affiliates
With CS professor XD Yang, Liz is helping put together a "DartmouthCHI" virtual event to showcase exciting research by members of our fast-growing HCI community at Dartmouth. At…
Liz attends Google's Digital Health and Wellbeing Summit
Google's invitation-only Digital Health and Wellbeing Summit took place virtually June 9-11 and brought together academics and Googlers focused on how technology can support…
Teja passed her qualifying exam!
Last week Teja took her PhD Qualifying Exam, and now it's official: the committee (Jeremy Faludi, Petra Bonfert-Taylor, Vikrant Vaze, and Liz) was unanimous in recommending a pass…
Paper accepted at IDC 2020
Paper with Stanford collaborators on the development of interactive narratives for math learning has been accepted to Interaction Design and Children (IDC) 2020!
WhoIsZuki gets a Best Paper Award at CHI 2020!
Our paper on designing narrative-based feedback to motivate behavior has received a CHI 2020 Best Paper Award (less than top 1% of submissions). Extremely thankful for the…
Interactions special issue on Inbodied Interaction is out
The multi-institution collaboration to create a special topic spread on Inbodied Interaction is now available in the [March-April 2020…
Two papers appearing at CHI 2020
We have two papers accepted to CHI 2020! One article is with Stanford collaborators about the design of personalized, narrative-based interfaces to motivate physical activity, and…
2019 6
Teja interning with Synapse this winter
Teja is heading to her internship at Synapse Product Development in Seattle! She'll be a Sustainable Design Research Intern for the next 3 months, performing user research to…
Liz presenting to National Academies
Liz is traveling to Washington D.C. to present at an NIA-sponsored National Academies of Sciences workshop on mobile technology for adaptive aging.
Teja selected as a Runner for the Magnuson Center's West Coast Experience
Teja is taking part in another Dartmouth Entrepreneurs Forum opportunity, having been selected as a Runner for the West Coast Experience Program! The West Coast Experience is run…
Teja attending the west coast Dartmouth Entrepreneurs Forum
Teja is on her way to San Francisco to participate and volunteer at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF). The DEF is open to the full Dartmouth community and provides an amazing…
Teja accepted to SSEDR'19
The Summer School for Engineering Design Research (SSEDR) is a 2-part summer program for PhD students taking place this year during May and July at locations in Croatia and…
Liz is joining Dartmouth!
Liz has accepted Thayer's offer to join the faculty as the Charles H. Gaut Charles H. Norberg Assistant Professor of Engineering! She'll be deferring the appointment for one year…