Swathi Ram

Year in School
Senior

Major

Research Interests
Interactive Computing

Research Mentor
Prof. Karrie Karahalios

Research/Engagement Experience
I began research in software engineering and human-computer interaction (HCI) when I realized I was interested in learning more about HCI from a research perspective. Within the Social Systems and Social Spaces lab, I was able to work on various projects within the broad field of HCI.

Interests
I am interested in intersection between ethics and engineering and the role HCI plays in technology consumption.

Project Title
Modeling Second Language Acquisition Utilizing Speech Pathology Principles and Visual Models Using Spectrograms

How did I get interested in Computer Science?
I decided to do CS because I enjoyed the feeling of creating and problem solving. I recognized how diverse of a field CS is and how many different applications there are for software skills.

What social interests matter to me?
Some social interests that matter to me are intersectional feminism, racial injustice, and climate issues.

What is my most impactful college experience?
My most impactful college experience was when I first got involved with my research lab. I felt honored to work amongst grad students and learn about all the research projects. It was a very gratifying experience to learn from people who are so passionate in their field and to be a part of their community.

These are a few of my favorite things!
I love exploring new places on campus, particularly cafes and plant shops. I want to create a garden in my space and the plant shops on campus have started to contribute to it already.

Research Description
I am working with P.h.D student Charlotte Yoder as a part of Professor Karrie Karahalios’ Social Spaces Lab to create a visualization platform to help L1 English speakers improve their pronunciation of Spanish. The purpose of these studies is to ascertain if focusing on different linguistic elements improves pronunciation in Spanish as a second language (L2) for college-age students who speak English as a first language (L1). We begin by describing the experimental conditions, measurement of learning outcomes, and the means of bringing the two together. To determine learning outcomes, we measure motivation, pronunciation, and perception at each lab check-in. We aim to measure both the short-term effects of interacting with the tool as well as longer-term interactions.

Biography
Swathi Ram is currently a Senior James Scholar student majoring in Computer Science & Philosophy from the Bay Area. She is passionate about the intersection between ethics and engineering and how human-computer interaction (HCI) will transform the tech industry. She is the chair of SIGCHI (an association for computing machinery (ACM) special interest group focused on HCI) where she hopes to learn more about the field and foster a learning community among undergraduates. Her research began with an independent study with Professor Jabbarvand where she developed a program to collect papers focused on Android energy testing for a systematic literature review and topic modeling. Now, Swathi contributes to research in Professor Karahalios' Social Systems lab on a project which investigates the usability of Smart IoT devices in home integration with distributed systems principles.