Prof. Dr. Thiemo Wambsganss

• Human-Centered AI-based Systems (HAIS)-Lab

• Human-Centered AI-based Systems

• Human-Computer Interaction

• Large Language Models

• Educational Technology

• AI for Education

• Natural Language Processing

• My research lies in the general area of Human-Computer Interaction with influences from Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning. I strive to understand how humans perceive, interact, and learn with intelligent tools. Based on these insights, I build adaptive user interfaces that go beyond static and rule-based interaction to advance the capabilities when working and learning in the digital world.
  
  Specifically, I am driven by the vast opportunities to enhance and improve pedagogical scenarios based on recent advantages in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to enable humans to learn self-reliant and individually independent of an educator or their background. To do so, I use techniques from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to build AI-powered education tools. My research follows three connected main lines of work: 1) create and study pedagogical conversational agents or intelligent writing support systems to improve educational scenarios, 2) explore methods and techniques to model student performance in numerical or textual data, and 3) build computational approaches that control when, where and how to provide students intelligent feedback and self-evaluation.
  
  As part of a research team, I have developed adaptive argumentation writing support systems which helps individuals to develop better writing and reasoning skills (CHI 2020 or ACL 2022 paper). Also, I built an intelligent conversational agent that provides students with adaptive and individual argumentation tutoring while writing persuasive essays independent of an instructor, time or location (CHI 2021 paper). Moreover, I designed an empathy writing support tool by modeling the cognitive and emotional empathy structures in student-written texts (ACL 2021 or CHI 2022 paper).

• 2023-today Tenure-track Assistant Professor for Digtial Technology Management Bern University of Applied Sciences in Bern, CH
• 2022-2023 PostDoc and project group lead at the Machine Learning for Education Laboratory (ML4ED) École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, CH
• 2021-2022 Visiting Research Collaborator at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USA
• 2022 Research Visitor at the Natural Language and Information Processing (NLIP) research group University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
• 2018-2022 PhD. Student and Research Associate at the Institute of Information Management University of St. Gallen (HSG), CH
• 2016-2018 Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Industrial Engineering Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), GER
• 2017 ME310 Design Thinking Class as part of the Sugar network Stanford University, USA
• 2015 Bachelor thesis within a scientific exchange at the Software Institute Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), Beijing, CHN
• 2012-2016 Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Industrial Engineering Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), GER

• Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)

• Swiss ACM SIGCHI Chapter

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

2021 Nominated for the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) for the paper "Pedagogical Agents for Interactive Learning: A Taxonomy of Conversational Agents in Education"

2021 Awarded with the ACM CHI Honourable Mention Award of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) for the paper "ArgueTutor: An Adaptive Dialog-Based Learning System for Argumentation Skills"

2021 Awarded with the 1st place of the DELINA LEARNTEC Innovation award in the category higher education for the project "ArgueLearn - Adaptive learning of argumentation skills based on artificial intelligence"

2021 One-year research fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, Doc.Mobility) at Carnegie Mellon University

2021 Doctoral Consortium at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) for the dissertation "Designing Adaptive Argumentation Learning Systems Based on Artificial Intelligence"

2021 Nominated for the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik for the paper "Designing an Adaptive Empathy Learning Tool Designing an Adaptive Empathy Learning Tool"

2020 Awarded with the "Best Theory Paper First Runner-Up Award" at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) for the paper "The Anatomy of User Experience with Conversational Agents: A Taxonomy and Propositions of Service Clues"

2020 Awarded with the ACM CHI Honourable Mention Award of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) for the paper "AL: An Adaptive Learning Support System for Argumentation Skills"