Consortium on Data-Driven
Human Performance and Personalized Interventions (HAPPI)

Science and technology’s ultimate purpose is to improve human quality of life, and one way to do this is to augment and improve human abilities.

Intellectual Merit

We aim to pioneer and promote the concept of Data-Driven Human Performance — the theory and practice of applying efficient and large-scale data sensing, collection, and analysis in improving human performance.

Our goal is to advance science and build collaborative partnerships to build the area of Human Performance Analytics and Informatics. To this end, our scientific research agenda is composed of advancing science in

(a) how to efficiently collect and analyze large-scale multi-modal sensor data across a multitude of users in highly noisy and dynamic environments, and

(b) how to exploit such data to advance human performance through personalized interventions.

To ground our research we drive it using applications with broad societal benefits and significant potential for scientific and technological breakthroughs. Our research is interdisciplinary, with challenges to be collectively addressed by computer scientists, engineers, and biologists.

We focus on the use of human performance data, collected on a large-scale, over long time periods, and in real-world environments, to improve human performance under physically challenging conditions; we do this through the use of state-of-the-art analysis and distributed computation techniques. The corresponding research challenges include:

• how to efficiently collect and meaningfully analyze large-scale multi-modal sensor data across a multitude of users in highly noisy and dynamic environments, and
• how to exploit such data to advance human performance through personalized interventions.

Applications of such systems are far-reaching with broad societal benefits and significant potential for scientific and technological breakthroughs at the interface of biological sciences, engineering, and computer science.

Our research focuses on

(1) real-time collection of data during task performance from personal sensors in noisy and dynamic real-world environments,

(2) meaningful analysis of large volumes of multi-modal information that can facilitate personalized interventions, and

(3) distributed computation and resource management in hybrid and geographically distributed environments.

This research agenda presents long-term interdisciplinary research challenges that require significant integrative activities among our interdisciplinary team members. Applications of Human Performance Analytics are far-reaching in numerous aspects of human performance in daily life (e.g., work, home, and in the community). Our research will allow exploration and testing of multiple hypotheses at the interface of biological sciences, computer science, and engineering.

Broader Impacts

Our HAPPI Consortium is actively involved in innovations in and integration of research, education, and knowledge transfer, and on enabling diversity, with its team of experts’ directions driven by our interdisciplinary vision.

HAPPI goals include:

(1) training of K-12 teachers and postdoctoral scholars as well as undergraduate, graduate, and K-12 students from diverse backgrounds for careers that require interdisciplinary expertise in computer science, biological sciences, engineering, and related fields; and

(2) translation of knowledge to the broader public, partly via the center’s core education program and partly via the project’s multi-sector knowledge transfer programs that promote broader dissemination of information and increased awareness of scientific breakthroughs enabled by HAPPI Consortium.

Our HAPPI Consortium will accomplish this through existing partnerships available to participating institutions in Southern California. For instance, HAPPI will have the advantage of USC’s proximity and strong ties with institutions of formal (USC Family of Schools) and informal (California Science Center) learning that serve the largely low-income households in the culturally diverse, urban core of LA.