About Me

Hi！I am a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland’s College of Information (iSchool), advised by Professor Amanda Lazar at The Health Aging and Technology (THAT) Lab. Prior to my PhD, I earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech, where I worked with Professor Sang Won Lee to design interactive systems that facilitate empathy among users.

My research is in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on designing useful and accessible technologies for individuals and communities often overlooked in technology design.

My graduate research centers on aging and dementia. Specifically, I apply interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks (e.g., Erving Goffman’s dramaturgy and Distributed Cognition) together with careful methodological qualitative methodology. Studying people’s abilities and challenges in the technology experiences often lead to a deficit perspective that attention is placed on the costs, stress, and social losses associated with cognitive and physical changes in aging and cognitive changes.

To move away from deficit thinking and translate this perspective into practice, I examine the rich, beyond the interface context of technology use for older adults and people with cognitive concerns to connect designers’ practices to this lived context. Following this, I pair a pragmatic view with this perspective to operationalize cognitive capacity in a material environment to track how cognition is performed, supported, and sustained through technology use. Finally, I examine how technology resources can be shared at a communal level to sustain long term technology engagement when cognitive capacity outpaces what can be managed alone. Towards this end, my research brings in-depth empirical understanding to people’s everyday technology experiences, opens new design avenues for what technologies should support, and informs how these technologies ought to be designed by accounting for the changing and emergent nature of cognition.

My interdisciplinary training shapes how I bridge theory and practice. In computer science, I developed a commitment to designing and building interactive systems that learn from use. In information science, I draw on critical and analytical thinking, using interdisciplinary frameworks to deepen qualitative understandings of people’s technology experiences. Throughout, I maintain a pragmatic orientation. This approach allows me to tackle complex social problems with analytical rigor and translate insights into tools grounded in people’s lived realities. Through an analytical and pragmatic approach, my research has led to publications in top-tier HCI venues, including CHI, CSCW, ASSETS, and UIST, and has been recognized with a Best Paper Award at CHI 2025.