Joaquin A. Aguilar A.
Last Updated: April 2008

I am a first year Ph.D. student at Northwestern University. My Ph.D. is in Technology and Social Behavior, a joint Ph.D. in computer science and communication studies. I am affiliated with the articulab, which is directed by Dr. Justine Cassell, my advisor. I am also affiliated with Northwestern's Center for Technology and Social Behavior, also directed by Dr. Cassell.

Previously, I did my B.S. in computer science at the University of Texas at El Paso, where I was affiliated with the interactive systems group. My honors senior thesis advisor was Dr. David G. Novick. LUKIS TALES was the multi-agent system I developed using SOAR, SML, and C++ for the thesis.
Research

I am interested in creating technologies that can communicate with people in the same way people communicate with each other. I plan to combine my wide range of interests into one main project that will be used for my dissertation. I also want to work on several small and big projects in order to broaden my knowledge.

Research interests:

  • Artificial intelligence
    • Software agents
      • Embodied conversational agents
      • Relational agents; Personality and emotions
    • Creativity
      • Story generation systems
    • Common sense reasoning
    • Cognition
  • Human-computer interaction
    • Interactive story telling
    • Video game development
    • Culture and gender and its relationships with technology
  • Communication studies
    • Discourse
      • Grounding
    • Persuasion and Influence
    • Mass media and individual voice
    • Personality and media
  • Linguistics
    • Computational linguistics
    • Language and mind
    • Language and personal development
    • Language and culture
    • Context
  • Psychology
    • Body language
    • Milton H. Erickson (Hypnosis, unconcious, stories)
    • Neuro-linguistic programming
    • People's individual history as a reflection of their current self
    • Theory of mind
  • Art
    • Story and character development
    • Literature focused on manga and anime
  • Teaching
    • Teaching styles
    • Teacher-student interaction
    • Advisor-student interaction (research level)
    • Senpai-Kohai teaching: Teaching underclassmen through extra-curricular projects
    • Theory of active diversification
 Documents

Projects

  1. One that deals with Rapport
  2. Another that deals with Grounding

Publications

  1. Undergraduate Honors Senior Thesis (pdf)

Websites

Joaquin Aguilar
Organizations
At Northwestern University:
  1. McCormick Graduate Leadership Council
At the University of Texas El Paso:
  1. Open Source Game System
  2. ACM student chapter
  3. Alpha Chi (10% of Seniors)
  4. Golden Key (15% of Seniors)
  5. Mortar Board National College Honor Society
  6. National Society of Collegiate Scholars
  7. Alpha Lambda Delta
 Hobbies
  • Table tennis (ping pong), racquet, skating
  • Magic
  • Walking my laptop around (It gets slow if I don't)
  • Collecting stuff (Currently collecting RPG video games, books about game development, Dilbert books, among other things)
  • Getting experience on anything that will get me closer to my dreams
  • Listening to music
  • Law, particularly copyright law. Torts (Civil wrongs) are interesting too

Definition of an Introvert

The only person who decides who I am is me.
Reason, facts and logic before anything else.

Religion

I am an atheist; I am a bright.
I believe people are free to believe whatever they want as long as 1) it does not hurt others and 2) they do not hurt themselves.
"I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one." From The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; God cannot be proven or disproven, but I consider it highly irrational.

No respectable scientist should use his or her title to approve the ideas conveyed by religion. Religion and science ARE IN WAR. Scientists must experience cognitive dissonance to believe in religion and science at the same time. Science requires FACTS. Religion, on the other hand, requires FAITH. Science has not, to date, backed up ANY religion.

The fact that we have to cite 'smart' people on both sides of the argument is deplorable. Who cares who believed in what? In an ideal world every person would have a level of education equivalent to a Ph.D. and would be able to make rational well-informed decisions most of the time. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Instead, people look at smart people who believe in what they do in order to justify their own beliefs in an 'intelligent' way. Here is a little secret though, most of those smart people that people cite when arguing for religion lived in the past, well in the past... The common theme when looking at the past is that there will never be as much information in the past as there is in the present. That is, smart people in the present deal with much more information that people in the past...

Three important things to keep in mind while working out
  1. Work out with inspiration. If you do not have an objective in mind or something to keep you going then nothing will happen. Whenever I work out I listen to music I like and think about where I want to be.
  2. If you set up to do something do not stop halfway. Not only will the exercise not work, but your confidence will drop. Make sure to give yourself an objective you can actually pursue or have the guts to do whatever you set up to do
  3. Improve everyday. If you managed to run for 3 minutes yesterday, then run for 3.5 minutes today.
Dilbert
 Monkeys
George Carlin on religion
 Links to funny vidz
Tony v. Paul
Village sniper
The 305
MANtage
Pachelbel Rant
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
Saying Goodbye After a Dinner Party
More on evolution
Ken Miller on Human Evolution

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