I am an Assistant Professor and lead the Faces, Avatars, & Robots Lab (FAR Lab) in the Program of Color Science & Munsell Color Science Laboratory at Rochester Institute of Technology.  

 

Our research explores how the human face and the visual system interact, forming a powerful tool to transmit the myriad information that regulates social interactions. I am particularly interested in the visual and social information that is conveyed through changes in facial color appearance. 

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Some primary goals of this research are to understand how the visual system perceives even subtle variations in face and skin color (e.g., visual detection & discrimination), and how facial color can influence judgments about the person (e.g., preference, emotion). 

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This research focuses not only on real human faces, but also includes artificial social agents (e.g., social robots, avatars, emojis), as well as perceiving faces in virtual- and augmented- reality environments.

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I am also broadly interested in color-emotion associations, measurement of skin color, and appearance of skin tones in art.