From a young age, Austin Wilson was driven by an insatiable curiosity about how things worked. This interest led him to join the Science Olympiad in middle school and the Robotics team in high school. That passion propelled him to earn a B.S. in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University in 2022. Now pursuing his M.S. in Computer Engineering at CWRU’s Human Fusions Institute, Wilson received an Ohio Space Grant Consortium fellowship to support his graduate research. He recently had the opportunity to present his work at the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Brook Park, Ohio.
Wilson is a member of Assistant Professor Alexis E. Block’s SaPHaRI (Social and Physical Human-Robot Interaction) Lab. His research focuses on AstroPsych, a novel, therapist-guided multimodal AI framework for real-time mental health support. Integrating principles from human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, and psychology, the project explores how technology can provide meaningful emotional support when human connection is limited.
In addition to his recent presentation at the Ohio Space Grant Consortium, Wilson also shared his research with an international audience at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. His workshop paper marked his first peer-reviewed publication as part of HFI and was presented remotely at the conference.
“I’m incredibly proud of Austin for presenting our research at the Ohio Space Grant Consortium,” said Block. “He did an excellent job summarizing complex work with accuracy and clarity, and it was exciting to see how much interest his presentation generated. He was a fantastic representative of our lab and CWRU.”
