Fanya S. Montalvo
I have a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts. I've been a researcher in the subareas of human vision, computer graphics, artificial intelligence and interactive graphics. As a research scientist I've worked at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Hewlett Packard Labs., MIT AI and Media Labs., and, most recently, at Digital's Computer Research Lab. At CRL I combined these interests in studying how knowledge-based representations could be used to simplify graphic interaction and its attachment to applications, an area I call knowledge visualization.
I've recently become interested in a sub-domain of computer science which I call emotional computing (aka affective computing). Emotional computing is characterized by a primary concern for either modeling or embodying emotions in the computer, or by building systems that respond to, or recognize emotions in their users. A number of practitioners are doing very good work in this area, althought they themselves would not call it that, as the labeling of the area, as such, is not yet happening. Identifying and highlighting excellent examples of this work will help it to cohere as a legitimate field within computer science and engineering.
In the past two years I've become an independent consultant in user interface and graphic design, specializing in knowledge visualization, that is, the representation of complex or technical information. I'm also an artist specializing in Huichol-style yarn paintings.