Ethar Hussein

Year in School
Junior

Major
Computer Science

Research Interests
Artificial Intelligence Interactive Computing

Research Mentor
Prof. Ranjitha Kumar

Research/Engagement Experience
I perform data mining research working on UI app polishing, helping collecting 1000+ data traces e2e testing, and debugging on On-Device Interaction Mining system. I use an Android application developed with Kotlin and Android accessibility service, hosted on AWS Amplify, to help app developers conduct user research and collect visual and structural data in an easy and flexible way.

Interests
Industry Research

Project Title
On-Device Interaction Mining (ODIM) and Major Match

How did I get interested in Computer Science?
I got into computer science because I loved math. Give me a problem any time and day, I will gladly solve it. However, I knew I didn't want to major in mathematics or do that for the rest of my life. There were too many things that were also intriguing to me. When I took my first computer science principles class in high school, I loved it! I always used to make posters and flyers for clubs and my community center and I loved programming that allowed me to create a product where it would catch others'/consumers' eye and interact with something I created with just a few lines of code! I then went into the Girls Who Code SIP and created an awesome project which solidified my desire to pursue Computer Science. Later on, I became Lead Teaching Assistant for the Girls Who Code SIP. I love how computer science can tap into any field! Moreover, I love to work in and conduct research related to industry such as HCI/AI.

What social interests matter to me?
I love creating projects! One of my favorite ways to be creative is that in my home I have a wall of colorful sticky notes with ideas of projects I want to build.

What is my most impactful college experience?
I aim to be a life-long learner and grow everyday. Right after I accomplish my projects, I strive for new goals. I want to tap into every area of computer science to explore and learn new technology and see what areas I gravitate towards the most. I look for ways I can be creative, because thats what ultimately leads me to be passionate about the project I am building on. Being a student at UIUC, I am always inspired and determined because I'm surrounded by a collaborative and creative community. In addition, I also was a PURE in the program, where I lead a project to help guide students such as undecided majors and incoming freshmen choose a major and set out a career path helping them envision what they want to do long-term post-graduation. I also served Ethar as a teaching assistant for introduction to programming classes for three semesters. My team won the congressional app challenge for district 11 in Illinois and also won the hackathon at Stanford University. I am also in the AI4ALL Program doing an AI-Project for audio detection of silence cancelation.

These are a few of my favorite things!
Ice skating, rock climbing, traveling.

Research Description
Interaction data-driven applications depend on data that become outdated easily. We are developing an On-Device Interaction Mining (ODIM) system that records users' interaction traces on mobile apps. It will enable more natural interactions and improve maintainability and accessibility based on the previous Interaction Mining for Mobile Apps (ERICA) infrastructure. The system uses Android's accessibility service to capture design and interactivity data, including screenshots, view hierarchy, and gestures, as a mobile app. The collected data can be uploaded to any cloud service such as AWS and automatically processed to update interaction datasets.

Biography
I was born and raised in Chicago!