I am a PhD researcher co-advised by Prof. Mauro Cherubini from UNIL and Prof. Dinesh Babu Jayagopi from IIIT BangaloreMy research explores the intersection of Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence, together with insights from psychological theories. I focus on building and evaluating human-centered, responsible AI technologies, with a particular emphasis on automated interview training systems for job seekers. Broadly, I'm interested in Human-centered AI, aiming to enhance individuals' ability to interact with and learn from AI systems, thereby making a tangible impact on them. Keywords: Human AI interaction, Responsible AI, Human-centered design and evaluation, AI risks

I completed my Master's by Research in AI at IIIT Bangalore where my thesis focused on improving and automating asynchronous video interviews using Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Generation, Multimodal Processing. My industry background includes research experience at Accenture Technology Labs and HP Inc R&D Labs working on different NLP problems. Prior to my Master's, I worked at Fidelity Investments for 2 years.

When not working, I enjoy doing the classical dance form of Kathak and getting to know about zero-waste / sustainable practices.

Publications

  1. Pooja S. B. Rao, Sanja Šćepanović, Ke Zhou, Edyta Paulina Bogucka, Daniele Quercia “ RiskRAG: A Data-Driven Solution for Improved AI Model Risk Reporting. ” ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25) 2025.
  2. Pooja S. B. Rao, Laetitia Renier, Marc-Olivier Boldi, Marianne S. Mast, Dinesh B. Jayagopi and Mauro Cherubini, “On the Potential of Supporting Autonomy in Online Video Interview Training Platforms.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS) 2024.
  3. Kavous S. Niksirat, Lahari Goswami, Pooja S. B. Rao, James Tyler, Alessandro Silacci, Sadiq Aliyu, Annika Aebil, Chat Wacharamanotham, Mauro Cherubini, “ Changes in Research Ethics, Openness, and Transparency in Empirical Studies between CHI 2017 and CHI 2022. ” ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23) 2023.

    🏆 Best Paper Award (Top 1%)

  4. Pooja S. B. Rao, Dinesh B. Jayagopi and Mauro Cherubini, “Explainability in Automated Training and Feedback Systems.” ACM CHI Workshop Human-Centered Perspectives in Explainable AI (HCXAI) 2022.
  5. Jinal Hitesh Thakkar, Pooja S. B. Rao, Kumar Shubham, Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Understanding Interviewees’ Perceptions and Behaviour towards Verbally and Non-verbally Expressive Virtual Interviewing Agents.” Companion Publication of the 2022 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2022.
  6. Vibhav Agarwal, Pooja S. B. Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Towards Code-Mixed Hinglish Dialogue Generation.” 3rd Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Conversational AI (NLP4ConvAI) held with EMNLP 2021
  7. Pooja S. B. Rao, Manish Agnihotri and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Improving Asynchronous Interview Interaction with Follow-up Question Generation.” International Journal of Interactive Multimedia & Artificial Intelligence (IJIMAI) 2021.
  8. Pooja S. B. Rao, Manish Agnihotri and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Incorporating Automatic Follow-up Question Generation for Asynchronous Interviews.” Workshop on Intelligent Information Processing and Natural Language Generation, ECAI, 2020.
  9. Pooja S. B. Rao, Sowmya Rasipuram, Rahul Das, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Automatic Assessment of Communication Skill in Non-conventional Interview Settings: A Comparative Study.” 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2017
  10. Sowmya Rasipuram, Rahul Das, Pooja S. B. Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Online Peer-to-Peer Discussions: A Platform for Automatic Assessment of Communication Skill.” Seventh International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW) 2017
  11. Sowmya Rasipuram, Pooja S. B. Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Automatic Prediction of Fluency in Interface-Based Interviews.” In India Conference (INDICON) 2016 IEEE
  12. Sowmya Rasipuram, Pooja S. B. Rao, and Dinesh B. Jayagopi, “Asynchronous Video Interviews vs. Face-to-Face Interviews for Communication Skill Measurement: A Systematic Study.” 18th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) 2016.

    🏆 Nominated for Best Student Paper

Updates

  1. 04/2025: Presented our CHI '25 paper "RiskRAG: A Data-Driven Solution for Improved AI Model Risk Reporting" at Yokohama, Japan.
  2. 03/2025: Received the SIGCHI Gary Marsden Travel award to travel to Yokohama, Japan for CHI 2025.
  3. 01/2025: My work at Nokia Bell Labs got accepted to CHI 2025!
  4. 06/2024 to 08/2024: Summer internship at the Responsible AI team, Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge.
  5. 06/2024: Our journal paper got accepted to IJHCS!
  6. 04/2024: Successfully conducted the workshop “Multimodal Machine Learning for Human Behaviour Understanding” at AMLD 2024. You can find all the resources in this repo!
  7. 12/2020: Our workshop proposal “Multimodal Machine Learning for Human Behaviour Understanding”, joint work with Laxminarayen N. V., got accepted at AMLD 2024
  8. 07/2023: Invited talk on our CHI 2023 paper “Changes in Research Ethics, Openness, and Transparency in Empirical Studies between CHI 2017 and CHI 2022” at the Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge. You can find the talk here.
  9. 04/2023: Our paper “Changes in Research Ethics, Openness, and Transparency in Empirical Studies between CHI 2017 and CHI 2022” has received the Best Paper recognition at ACM CHI 2023
  10. 11/2022: Volunteered for ICMI 2022 that happened in Bangalore, India.
  11. 08/2022: Our paper "Understanding Interviewees' Perceptions and Behaviour to Verbally and Non-verbally Expressive Virtual Interviewing Agents" accepted at workshop GENEA organized in conjunction with ICMI 2022
  12. 05/2022: Presented our opinion paper "Explainability in Automated Training and Feedback Systems" ACM CHI Workshop HCXAI 2022. You can find the talk here.
  13. 04/2022: Our opinion paper "Explainability in Automated Training and Feedback Systems" accepted at ACM CHI Workshop Human-Centered Perspectives in Explainable AI HCXAI 2022
  14. 03/2022: Volunteered for AMLD 2022 that happened in Lausanne, Switzerland.
  15. 04/2021: Successfully conducted the workshop “Virtual Interviewer: Build your own interviewing agent” at AMLD 2021. You can find all the resources in this repo!
  16. 02/2021: Our paper "Improving Asynchronous Interview Interaction with Follow-up Question Generation" has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence (Special Issue Extended Papers ECAI)
  17. 02/2021: Our workshop “Virtual Interviewer: Build your own interviewing agent” is scheduled on April 27th from 14:00 to 17:00. Find more details here!
  18. 12/2020: Conducted a hands-on session "Procedure Detection" for R V College of Engineering
  19. 12/2020: Our workshop proposal “Virtual Interviewer: Build your own interviewing agent” accepted at AMLD 2021
  20. 11/2020: Our paper "Towards Generating Topic-driven and Affective Responses to assist Mental Wellness" accepted at CARE 2020 organized in conjunction with ICPR2020
  21. 09/2020: Presented our paper "Incorporating Automatic Follow-up Question Generation for Asynchronous Interviews" IntelLang 2020 (slides)
  22. 09/2020: Joined University of Lausanne as a PhD student
  23. 06/2020: Our paper "Incorporating Automatic Follow-up Question Generation for Asynchronous Interviews" accepted at IntelLanG workshop co-located with ECAI 2020

Master Thesis

Work towards adding automated elements to asynchronous interview systems by solving the problems of interview follow-up question generation and automatic assessment of candidates using various Machine Learning techniques like text generation, text classification and transfer learning techniques for NLP.

  • Automatic Follow-up Question Generation – enable a virtual interviewer to generate a follow-up question given a predetermined question and a candidate response using LSTM-based and Transformer models. (View demo)
  • Automatic Assessment of Communication Skill – Supervised predictive models to assess the written communication skill scores of interview candidates in various non-conventional interview settings. (View thesis and defense slides)