I am a class-taking, code-writing, paper-reading, conference-attending, knowledge-producing, PhD-seeking, grad student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. My research interests lie in the intersection between Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence. As part of the DuB group, I am advised by James Fogarty and James Landay. My work is funded by the US government in the form of a NDSEG fellowship.

My work focuses on making machine learning easier for developers to use. I'm motivated by the following observation. New, compelling applications of computing, such as recognizing human activity or finding bugs in large software projects, require computers to process and make sense of data. Gathering the needed data is becoming easier, and the statistical machine learning algorithms that process this data are becoming more accurate. However, the use of these algorithms is beyond the reach of most developers; it is relegated, for the most part, to experienced researchers with expertise or access to expertise in machine learning. My recent work indicates that much of the difficulty stems not from the complexity of algorithms themselves, but instead it arises because non-experts are unfamiliar with the highly iterative process of using statistical machine learning algorithms. My current work attempts to fill this gap by building tools that support this process.

In addition to my research focus above, I've also worked on: creating less-obtrusive methods labeling activity data while people are performing the activity; using landmarks to provide better driving directions; and leveraging information extraction and interface design to make contributing to Wikipedia easier and to allow information extraction algorithms to learn from human contributions, .

In an earlier life, I was a Masters student at Stanford University focusing on Artificial Intelligence. While at Stanford, I worked in the Robot Learning Lab, the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, and with the Natural Language Group. I worked on projects dealing with sensor actuation, error visualization, turing tests, learning in virtual reality, structure from motion, and hypernym induction. I also assisted in teaching the graduate artificial intelligence course and taught a robot to play the piano.

Before Stanford, I was an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University double-majoring in Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction. I spent summers in the Speech Lab building and testing speech interfaces for wearable computers. As part of my senior project, I researched digital tools for online note-taking.

E-mail:	kayur-at-cs-dot-washington-dot-edu
Office:	CSE 366
Address:	Kayur Patel University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering 185 Stevens Way, PAC 101 Seattle, WA 98195
Directions:	Campus Map of the Paul Allen Center By Car By Public Transit Building Directory
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