Principal investigators Professor Edith Law at the Cheriton School of Computer Science and Professor Hélène Sauzéon at Université de Bordeaux have been funded to create an Associate Team at Inria, France’s National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology. Inria’s Associate Team program supports bilateral scientific collaborations and promotes and strengthens the institute’s strategic partnerships with leading researchers abroad.
The research consortium, titled Curiosity-driven Learning Across the Lifespan, or CuriousTech for short, will be directed by Professors Edith Law and Myra Fernandes at the University of Waterloo and Professors Hélène Sauzéon and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer at the Inria Centre at the University of Bordeaux. They will lead a team of research associates, postdoctoral researchers and grad students, bringing together their expertise across the cognitive sciences, education research, aging research, and human-computer interaction.
“The research our international team will conduct will produce new understandings of the role of curiosity in education and health by designing and assessing new interactive educational technologies,” said Professor Law. “Beyond academic contributions, we expect that the technologies we develop will help address broader societal challenges, such as educational equality in school and the needs of older adults with cognitive aging conditions.”
CuriousTech will build upon the findings and technologies developed from three previous Inria-funded University of Bordeaux–University of Waterloo collaborative projects. CuriousTech’s goal is to create educational technologies that use curiosity as the key ingredient to meet the learning needs of individuals across all ages and cognitive abilities to enhance their health and well-being.
Edith
Law,
an
Associate
Professor
at
the
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science,
directs
the
Augmented
Intelligence
Lab
and
co-directs
the
Human-Computer
Interaction
Lab.
She
is
broadly
interested
in
social
computing
technology
that
coordinates
small
groups
to
large
crowds,
new
models
of
interactions
with
machine
intelligence,
and
how
technology
can
be
designed
to
foster
and
celebrate
certain
human
values.
About CuriousTech
In a famous quote to his biographer Carl Seeling, Albert Einstein wrote, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” In that brief comment, Einstein captured what we believe to be intuitively true — that being curious is at the heart of learning, discovery and growth.
To this end, CuriousTech will design educational programs to support intrinsically motivating and personalized learning, including the unique educational needs of children with atypical neurodevelopment and adults with age-related cognitive conditions, while achieving foundational education objectives.
Personalization is a core challenge of education, as everyone is unique and may require different approaches to learn. Educational apps that adapt to individual needs can help children acquire fundamental numeracy and literacy skills, as well as help older adults manage cognitive decline. The CuriousTech team will leverage fundamental research on curiosity from artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences to design and assess the effectiveness of personalized educational technologies.
Curiosity is critically important for self-actualization, resilience, well-being, and quality of life for people of all ages. Recent research on curiosity at the intersection of computer science, cognitive science and neuroscience has shown that activities that are the most intrinsically motivating for individuals are those that are self-chosen. The CuriousTech research team will expand on this research to develop an original, cross-disciplinary approach that links curiosity-driven learning across all ages with new educational technologies, using both curiosity-related models and artificial intelligence techniques to personalize learning, maximize curiosity and learning outcomes.
Waterloo–Inria Associate Teams and International Research Chairs
NetMSS
—
NETwork
Monitoring
and
Service
orchestration
for
Softwarized
networks
2018–2020;
renewed
2022–2024
NetMSS
is
an
Associate
Team
formed
between
Inria
RESIST
and
the
University
of
Waterloo
focusing
on
network
softwarization
and
network
security.
NetMSS
is
led
by
Jérôme
François,
Inria
Research
scientist,
and
by
Raouf
Boutaba,
Professor
at
the
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science.
Professor
Raouf
Boutaba
also
held
an
Inria
International
Research
Chair
(2017–2022)
attached
to
Inria
RESIST
at
Nancy
Grand-Est.
Loki
2018–2020
Loki’s
research
explored
original
ideas,
fundamental
knowledge,
and
practical
tools
to
inspire,
inform
and
support
the
design
of
human-computer
interactions.
The
late
Professor Edward
Lank held
an
Inria
International
Research
Chair
attached
to
the
Loki
team
at
the
Inria
Centre
at
the
University
of
Lille.
Symbolic
2022–2024
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science
Professor
Éric
Schost
is
the
Waterloo
principal
investigator
on
Symbolic,
an
Inria
Associate
Team
focusing
on
symbolic
computation
research.