Katherine Mimnaugh
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
kmimnau2@illinois.edu
Bio
Katherine Mimnaugh is a Future Faculty Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Siebel School for Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working with Prof. Nancy Amato in the Parasol Lab. After completing her bachelor’s in psychology and spending a decade managing cognitive neuroscience research labs at UIUC, she received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Oulu where she studied immersive robotic telepresence with Prof. Steven LaValle. Her interdisciplinary research bridges human-centered computing, human-robot interaction, virtual reality, and psychophysiology to improve our understanding of user experience during technology use. Her work has examined cognitive and physiological responses to virtual reality and interactions with robots, and most recently explored measuring cybersickness using brain activity. Her research has been cited over 800 times, and she earned recognition as a Google scholarship recipient in 2020.
Areas of Research
- Human-Computer Interaction
Recentering the Human in Human-Centered Design
Virtual reality (VR) and spatial computing have emerged as transformative tools due to their efficacy in treating mental health, training doctors, and educating students. Despite these successes, this important technology has not reached its full potential because of serious constraints in comfort and user experience. I contend that a primary barrier to progress lies in our limited and often superficial understanding of the human component in human-computer interaction. While rapid advances in machine learning are revolutionizing computing, our strategies to decode and enhance human experience have not evolved at a comparable pace. To move the field forward and fully realize the possibility for more effective and commercially successful products, immersive and other technologies must be developed with a richer integration of knowledge from the human sciences. My research contributes to this integration by applying methods and insights from cognitive neuroscience to more precisely measure user experience and inform better design. Through the combination of objective and subjective measurements, the control of confounding factors, and an accounting for individual differences in user study results, I have elucidated the affective impacts of immersive nature exposure, identified determinants of preference and comfort in immersive robotic telepresence, and developed a novel measurement for cybersickness during VR use. Currently, I am refining a precise real-time cybersickness tracking method using brain activity and investigating methods to improve human signal quality for brain-computer interfaces. Looking ahead, I aim to extend this methodology towards the design of assistive devices for people living with chronic illness or disability. My ultimate goal is to help create systems and interactions that are not only more functional, but also more comfortable, enjoyable, and responsive to human needs.