James C. Lester
Director of the IntelliMedia Initiative for the College of Engineering
North Carolina State University
Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science (1994)
University of Texas at Austin
M.S.C.S. in Computer Science (1988)
University of Texas at Austin
B.A. in Computer Science (1986)
University of Texas at Austin
B.A. in History (1983)
Baylor University
Research
The primary objective of our research is to design, construct, and
empirically evaluate computational mechanisms to support
intelligent human-computer interaction in educational and
scientific software. In particular, we focus on developing
advanced animated and natural language explanation systems
that facilitate learning and scientific analysis. We pursue this
work in three areas: Knowledge-Based Learning Environments,
Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, and Natural Language
Generation. Much of this research is conducted through the
IntelliMedia
Initiative.
(Click on
a research area for relevant publications.)
- Knowledge-Based Learning Environments
Research Focus: - Animated pedagogical agents,
design-centered learning
environments, intelligent
interfaces, and task modeling.
Projects: - Design-A-Plant
The Internet Protocol Advisor
- Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology
Research Focus: - Interactive advisory systems for
homology searching, heterogenous genomics database
integration, and explanation generation for complex
analysis tasks.
Project: - The Genome Collaborator
- Natural Language Generation
Research Focus: - Explanation systems, natural
language revision,
functional/systemic
realization, knowledge-based
document planning.
Projects: - Knight
Fare
Revisor The Docu-Planner
Graduate Students
- William Bares (whbares@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Charles Callaway (cbcallaw@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Carl Hobson (cphobson@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Colin Leonard (cmleonar@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Greg Miller (gsmiller@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Gary Stelling (gdstelli@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Stuart Towns (sgtowns@eos.ncsu.edu)
- Jennifer Voerman (jlvoerma@eos.ncsu.edu)
Many other students (especially animators and multimedia
designers from NC State's
School of Design, and cognitive scientists
from NC State's
College of Education and Psychology) work
with us on the IntelliMedia Initiative.
Alumni
- Matthew Dailey (mdailey@cs.ucsd.edu)
Sponsors
We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the North
Carolina State University IntelliMedia Initiative, the
National Science Foundation, IBM, Novell, Glaxo Wellcome,
the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, Apple Computer,
and Microsoft.
Industry Collaborations
Our research benefits considerably from
partnerships with industry.
- Glaxo Wellcome: In collaboration with GW's
Bioinformatics Group, we
are conducting research on intelligent systems for
molecular biology.
- IBM: In collaboration with IBM,
we are creating new intelligent agent technologies.
Contact Information
(v3.0/2-September-96/
Charles Callaway)
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