My research focuses primarily (though not exclusively) on machine learning and human–computer interaction applications in education. My work has included automatic measurement of emotion during computer programming education, studying metacognition in online courses via natural language processing, and other topics related to learning and affective computing.

My research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and the University of Illinois. Papers resulting from my research have been published at journals and peer-reviewed conferences, where I also regularly present on my research.

I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a joint appointment in the Department of Educational Psychology. I am also a faculty affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and a faculty affiliate in Illinois Informatics.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Notre Dame. Subsequently, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.