MEDIA RELEASES

Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) presents the annual ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture titled “From Tin Man to Cyborg: Technology and Emotional Intelligence” on Wednesday, April 16 at 6:00 p.m. The lecture by Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory and co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, will be held in the Eloise Martin Recital Hall, 7900 W. Division Street, River Forest.

Why make technology with a heart? In her lecture, Picard will explore advances at MIT involving the installation of “emotional intelligence,” or the ability to recognize and respond appropriately to another person’s emotions and to know when (and when not) to display emotion, into technology such as robots, wearable and traditional computers and mobile devices. She will also share reflections on the social and ethical questions raised by the development of emotionally intelligent technology.

Picard will demonstrate a new system equipped with the ability to recognize complex cognitive states in real time and discern emotions based on a person’s head and facial movements. A wearable version of the system is under development for people with autism, who have trouble reading social-emotional cues.

Picard holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. She has been a member of the faculty at the MIT Media Laboratory since 1991 and was previously on the technical staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories. She is known internationally for pioneering research in affective computing and her work has been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Vogue, Wired and on the BBC.

The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture. Please reserve a space by contacting the GSLIS at (708) 524-6845 or at gslis@dom.edu.

The Lazerow Lecture honors Samuel Lazerow for his distinguished service to the library profession. He was a major contributor to the advancement of information technology at the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine and the National Agriculture Library. He ended his career as senior vice-president at the Institute for Scientific Information.

Accredited by the ALA, Dominican University’s GSLIS has been educating future library leaders and information professionals since the 1930s. The school offers master’s degrees in library and information science and in knowledge management.