USC artificial intelligence researcher Louis-Philippe Morency has been named one of “AI’s 10 to Watch” by the journal IEEE Intelligent Systems.

The list, which represents the leading new minds in the field, will be published in the May/June issue.

Morency, a leader of the nonverbal behaviors project at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, admits to a lifelong fascination with observing the ways people communicate without speaking.

“We exchange a lot of information through simple motions of the head, eyes and face,” he said. “My goal is to provide computers – specifically virtual humans – with the ability to recognize and utilize these visual cues as well.”

His interest in interactions has led Morency to some groundbreaking research and innovations in the areas of computer vision, human-computer interaction, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“The ‘10 to Watch’ represent the best of the best in artificial intelligence, and this is a well-deserved honor for Louis-Philippe,” said Randall W. Hill Jr., executive director of the Institute for Creative Technologies. “We are thrilled to have him be a part of our team.

“With their multidisciplinary approach,” Hill said, “the ICT virtual humans group is leading the way in creating characters who are engaging and effective, and Louis-Philippe’s work provides an integral addition to the project.”

Others named on the list include recently installed researchers and assistant professors at Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and Oxford universities.

“The committee of senior AI researchers was instructed to look for the individuals who they thought were most likely to have a high impact on the future of the field,” said James Hendler, editor in chief of IEEE Intelligent Systems.

“Louis-Philippe Morency was chosen because his work bridged several traditionally separate AI sub-areas and because of the exceptional quality of his research, which included winning the best paper award from the International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces two years in a row.”

The thrust of Morency’s research is to get computers to understand and anticipate non-verbal conversational cues such as nodding and shaking heads, which can be used to grasp the subtleties of conversation and make their behavior more human and believable.

To that end, Morency developed WATSON, a real-time library for visual feedback recognition in use at hundreds of labs and institutions worldwide. WATSON not only helps robots and virtual humans identify movement, but it also helps them anticipate when a gesture is likely to happen.

“You have to be aware of the entire dialogue context to interpret non-verbal behaviors,” Morency said. “The pace a person speaks, where they fix their gaze, when they are quiet, all these factors affect when we give visual feedback. Humans do this automatically, but computers need to be taught.”

Since coming to USC from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall, Morency has opted to roller-blade to his Marina del Rey office. And he’s become aware of a more professionally relevant perk.

“In Boston, people on the street tend to look down and be less expressive, which is unfortunate for my line of work,” he said. “People on the West Coast smile and nod their heads a lot more.”

But the gesture he appreciates most at the moment is his inclusion on the “10 to Watch” list.

“At first I didn’t believe it,” he said. “I am thrilled to be named alongside such impressive researchers. It is truly a big honor.”

For more information, visit http://www.computer.org/intelligent/10towatch08.html