Biography
Christine Lisetti is an Associate Professor at Florida International University (FIU) in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, and the Director of the Virtual Intelligent Social AGEnts (VISAGE) Laboratory.
Her long-term research goal is to develop engaging virtual socially intelligent and interactive agents — 3D characters capable of simulating human behavior and conversation—to assist people in various contexts through natural, expressive, and multimodal interactions. Her work explores applications in healthcare, medicine, educational games, and cyber-learning.
Lisetti’s research lies at the intersection of human-centered artificial intelligence (AI), human-computer interaction (HCI), affective computing, and virtual reality (VR). She investigates fundamental design principles for socially intelligent and interactive agents, and implements real-time interactive systems grounded in these principles.
She served on the founding Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the first top-tier journal dedicated to this emerging field. In addition to her theoretical work, Lisetti conducts applied research that translates these insights into practical solutions across diverse domains such as healthcare, medicine, and education.
Her research has been funded by federal agencies in the USA such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US National Institute of Health (NIH), the US Department of Education, NASA Ames, US Army STRICOM, the US Office of Naval Research (ONR); and in Europe by the European Union Commission, EUREKA Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA), the Provence-Alpes Cote d’Azur (PACA) Regional Research and Development Program; as well as by industry such as Intel, Microsoft, STMicroelectronics, Numedeon Inc., and the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training.
Awards & Honors
- Editorial Board of the Advances in Human Computer Interaction Journal, 2013-2016
- Founding Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 2010-2016
- nternational Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interactions (ACII’13), Geneva, Switzerland, 2013
- Excellence in Teaching Award, School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, 2009
- IFIP World Congress on Computing - Women and Technology Conference, Milan, Italy, 2008
- Robocup International Conference, Atlanta, USA, 2007
- Marie-Curie International Fellowship, European Commission, 2006
- Interact Workshop on Context and Emotion Aware Computing, Rome, Italy, 2005
- 72nd Congrés de l’AFCAS - Informatique Cognitive, Montreal, Canada, 2004
- Distinguished Research Lecturer Award, University of Central Florida, College of Engineering and Computer Science, 2003
- Distributed Mentoring Affiliate Award, Computing Research Association-Women (CRA-W), 2002
- Nils Nilsson Award for Integrating AI Technologies, Assoc. for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), with Murphy, 2000
- Technical Innovation Award, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), with Murphy, 2000
- Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Stanford University, 1997
- NIH Individual Research Service Award, National Institute of Health (NIH), 1996
- Honors, Editorial Boards, Key Notes
Education
- Ph.D., Computer Science, 1995
- MS, Computer Science, 1992
- BS, Computer Science, 1989