CARE-N: COMMUNITY-ALIGNED, RECOVERY-DRIVEN, EMOTIONALLY RESPONSIVE AI FOR RURAL NEBRASKA

Study Overview: CARE-N is a community-engaged research project that investigates how emotionally responsive artificial intelligence can be designed, evaluated, and improved in collaboration with rural Nebraska communities. The study combines conversational AI with wearable physiological sensing and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to better understand how people experience AI interactions and how multimodal information can improve emotionally responsive human–AI communication. Findings will guide the development of trustworthy, community-informed AI technologies for future behavioral health research and other applications requiring emotionally responsive human–AI interaction.

Biography: Massimiliano Pierobon, Ph.D. is the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a Resident Faculty member of the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior (CB3). His research focuses on molecular and biochemical communication and information theory, artificial intelligence, computational modeling, biomedical engineering, and human-centered intelligent systems, with an emphasis on developing trustworthy AI technologies that integrate physiological sensing, multimodal data, and adaptive computational models to improve human–AI interaction and support precision health research. His work has been supported by NSF, NIH, DoD, and other federal agencies.