Associate Professor
Laurianne Sitbon
Faculty of Science,
School of Computer Science
Biography
Laurianne is a Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council (ARC), and associate professor in the school of Computer Science at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. She started her academic career initiating QUT’s undergraduate and postgraduate students to the joys of search engine technologies, including data mining and natural language processing. Her research expertise spans human computer interactions (with a focus on co-design and cognitive accessibility), natural language processing (with a focus on semantics), and information retrieval. Her current projects include how to support people with intellectual disability in the selection of visuals (eg. emojis) for communicating, how systems can use visuals (eg. emojis) to better communicate with people with intellectual disability, how to investigate the requirements of multi-modal conversational systems that can best support the needs of people with intellectual disability, and more generally how people, such as experts, can "converse" with systems, which analyse data and make predictions, to assist them in making decisions. She obtained her Masters of Science and Engineering from the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbeliard in France and he PhD in Computer Science from the University of Avignon in France.Personal details
Positions
- ARC Future Fellow
Faculty of Science,
School of Computer Science - Associate Professor
Faculty of Science,
School of Computer Science
Keywords
Computer Human Interactions, Accessibility, Natural Language Processing, Semantic Processing, Information Retrieval, Intellectual Disability, Neurodiversity, Co-design, Communication Technologies, Assistive Technology
Discipline
Other Information and Computing Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Library and Information Studies
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- PhD
- MSc (Other)
- MScEng (Universite De Franche-Comte)
Professional memberships and associations
Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Special Interest Groups in Computer Human Interactions (SIGCHI) and in Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS).
Teaching
Unit Design and re-design
- 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 - Advanced Information Storage and Retrieval IFN647, in the Master of IT (IN20), 60 to 140 students, QUT
- 2017, 2018 - Databases IFB130 (scaling up to 1,000 students, starting a Peer Program within the unit)
- 2015, 2019 – Data Manipulation IFN509, transition unit (IN20 Master of IT curriculum, 40 students), QUT
- 2014 – Databases IAB130 (new unit for the new IN01 BIT curriculum, 325 students), QUT
- 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 – Search Engine Technology INB/INN344 (new unit, 10-45 students), QUT
- 2013-2014 – Data Warehousing and Mining INB/INN343 (redesigned for collaborative learning spaces in 2014, 50-60 students), QUT
- 2007 - Computational linguistics (new unit for the Master of IT, 30 students), University of Avignon
Project supervision
Engineering (Honours) projects (individual, bachelor of Software Engineering. Examples include:
- 2021 - Designing a Pictorial Communication Web Application With People Who Have Intellectual Disabilities
- 2020 - An investigation of IoT implementation into disability inclusion projects in rural Cambodia (with Engineers without Borders)
Masters by coursework projects (individual, master of IT). Examples include:
- S2 2019 - Track how people with intellectual disability use visual browsing to access information
- S2 2018 - Creative search by people with intellectual disability
- S2 2017 - An interactive map-search application in a virtual reality setting
CELL Projects (interdisciplinary groups)
The Community Engaged Learning Lab has been established by LTU in 2012 as a framework to allow students from all faculties to engage in interdisciplinary projects that can benefit community partners, and thus operate in a service learning fashion. Examples include:
- S2 2014: My Budget Buddy, Designing and prototyping a website to support people with intellectual disability when allocating their NDIS budget to support services (with Endeavour Foundation)
- S1 2014: Evaluating and improving a Virtual Learning Environment to facilitate remote lifestyle education for users with intellectual disabilities (with Endeavour Foundation)
Capstone projects (groups, bachelor of IT). Examples include:
- S2 2014: Mobile game to support young offenders. In partnership with iYouth Justice consortium. S2 2013: Information through technology for prisoners (see CELL projects) (with Queensland Corrective Services)
- S2 2013: Web based document management system to manage disabled service users at Endeavour Foundation (with Endeavour Foundation)
- S2 2013: Put yourself in the picture: a mobile application to help users with intellectual disabilities express what they want to achieve (with Endeavour Foundation)
Experience
Assoc. Prof. Sitbon is partnering with the Endevour Foundation, a queensland-based organisation supporting "people with an intellectual disability to live their best life", on research project, as well as to offer QUT students meaningful project opportunities. These project benefit people supported by Endeavour Foundation in many ways, informing practices, policies, technology design, but also providing a space for meaningful encounters for all involved.
Selected publications
- Sitbon L, Favre B, Brereton M, Koplick S, Fell L, (2020) Engaging the abilities of participants with intellectual disabilityin IIR research, CHIIR '20: Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval.
- Bayor A, Brereton M, Sitbon L, Ploderer B, Bircanin F, Favre B, Koplick S, (2021) Toward a Competency-based Approach to Co-designing Technologies with People with Intellectual Disability, ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 14 (2).
- Bircanin F, Brereton M, Sitbon L, Ploderer B, Bayor A, Koplick S, (2021) Including adults with severe intellectual disabilities in co-design through active support, CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Making Waves, Combining Strengths.
- Wilson C, Sitbon L, Ploderer B, Opie J, Brereton M, (2020) Self-expression by design: Co-designing the ExpressiBall with minimally-verbal children on the autism spectrum, CHI 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-13.
- Shackell C, Sitbon L, (2020) Computational opposition analysis using word embeddings: A method for strategising resonant informal argument, Argument and Computation, 10 (3), pp. 301-317.
- Rajapakse S, Brereton M, Sitbon L, (2021) A respectful design approach to facilitate codesign with people with cognitive or sensory impairments and makers, CoDesign, 17 (2), pp. 159-187.
- Sitbon L, Bayor A, Bircanin F, Koplick S, Brereton M, (2018) An exploration of how people with intellectual disability engage with online information retrieval, Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-6.
- Kholghi M, Sitbon L, Zuccon G, Nguyen A, (2016) Active learning: a step towards automating medical concept extraction, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 23 (2), pp. 289-296.
- Bruza P, Kitto K, Ramm B, Sitbon L, (2015) A probabilistic framework for analysing the compositionality of conceptual combinations, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 67, pp. 26-38.
- Brereton M, Sitbon L, Abdullah M, Vanderberg M, Koplick S, (2015) Design after design to bridge between people living with cognitive or sensory impairments, their friends and proxies, CoDesign, 11 (1), pp. 4-20.
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Laurianne, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Research projects
- Title
- A Pictorial Communication Framework for Inclusion
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- FT190100855
- Start year
- 2020
- Keywords
- Title
- Human-Machine Teaming:Designing Synergistic Learning of Humans and Machines
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- DP200103582
- Start year
- 2021
- Keywords
- Title
- New Information Access Technologies for People with Intellectual Disability
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP160100800
- Start year
- 2016
- Keywords
- Title
- Framing authentic assessment of service learning within an information technology curriculum
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- SD15-5151
- Start year
- 2015
- Keywords
- Assessment And Feedback Practices; Information Technology; Personal Development; Service Learning
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Co-Designing Multimodal Communication Experiences with People with Intellectual Disability, Their Peers and Social Robots
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Bouchra Senadji - Socially Connecting Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Through Inclusive CoDesign of Tangible and Visual Technology.
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Margot Brereton - Co-designing engaging multimodal technologies with people with intellectual disability and their support networks
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Margot Brereton - A Framework for Effective Mutual Learning of Humans and Machines in Radiology
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Margot Brereton, Professor David Lovell, Professor Andrew Bradley - Co-Designing with Adults with Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disabilities to Enable Active Communication Technology Use
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Margot Brereton, Dr Bernd Ploderer - People with Intellectual Disability and Online Health Information: eLearning for Better Engagement
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Jinglan Zhang - Crafting and Connecting: Co-Designing Technologies with Older Adult Crafters to Promote Family Connections
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Bernd Ploderer, Professor Margot Brereton
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- Co-Design Beyond Words with Minimally-Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum (2021)
- Analogical Frames by Constraint Satisfaction (2020)
- Finite Semiotics: A New Theory of Semiotics With Applications to Information Technology (2019)
- Making Collaborations to Design Personalised Technologies with People with an Intellectual Disability (2018)
- Smart Sampling of Environmental Audio Recordings for Biodiversity Monitoring (2018)
- Active Learning for Concept Extraction from Clinical Free Text (2017)
- Interactive Content Analysis: Evaluating Interactive Variants of Non-negative Matrix Factorisation and Latent Dirichlet Allocation as Qualitative Content Analysis Aids (2014)
- Semantic Search as Inference: Applications in Health Informatics (2014)
- A Tensor Encoding Model of Word Meaning: Theory and Application to Information Retrieval (2013)