Natalie Ruiz is a Researcher for the Human Performance Improvement (HPI) project, within the Making Sense of Data research theme, and is based at the ATP Laboratory. Working in the area of cognitive performance, her research involves the study of athletes' behaviour under high cognitive load.

In close collaboration with the Skill Acquisition Laboratory at the Australian Institute of Sport , Natalie is investigating the effects of strategic decision-making in elite team sports such as netball and basketball. The goal is to identify implicit behaviour patterns in modalities such as speech, gesture and eye-gaze, that can help us estimate and predict performance.

Before joining HPI in 2009, Natalie worked briefly with the Braccetto project, as part of the HxI initiative between NICTA, CSIRO and DSTO. Braccetto is a collaborative project in human-machine interaction that aims to develop sophisticated information sharing technology that can help geographically distributed teams collaborate more effectively.

At the end of 2008, Natalie completed the PhD candidature in the STaRUI project, under the supervision of  Dr. Fang Chen and Prof. Claude Sammut. Natalie joined NICTA in 2004 as a Research Engineer within the PEMMI project (precursor to the STaR-UI project).

Natalie also spent two years as a Researcher at the Motorola Australian Research Centre (MARC) from 2001 to 2003, working with the Human Language Technologies group,  where she nurtured her interest in Human Computer Interaction.

Natalie Ruiz recently submitted a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, will officially graduate later this year. Her dissertation, entitled "Cognitive Load Measurement in Multimodal Interfaces", explores the viability of using implicit behaviours in multimodal input to assess whether a user is experiencing high or low cognitive load.

Natalie has also received a Bachelor of Engineering (Software Engineering) (Hons 1st class) from UNSW in 2000, and a Bachelor of Arts (English) from UNSW and Boston College in 2001.

Natalie's primary research interest is human computer interaction, especially multimodal interaction. Multimodal interaction, an interesting niche of HCI, promotes natural and intuitive communication between users and machines, much like people conversing with one another. Attaining this level of interaction between users and computers is an integral step in making all types of computational devices and applications accessible and exploitable by anybody, from any background, age or experience. Interacting with a computer should be as easy as having a chat with just another kind of 'expert'... and this will be possible in the not too distant future. Natalie is interested in research that not only fulfills the promise of  universal accessibility, but also contributes in significant ways to shed light on human cognition itself.

In-depth study and analysis of multimodal input by users can provide us first with design cues to guide new and innovative interaction strategies, but also more importantly, with insights into human response production, i.e. the planning and execution of speech, gesture and eye gaze processes; and further, into human cognitive processes. In particular, Natalie is currently focussed harnessing tell-tale features in multimodal input to shed light on the causes and effects of cognitive overload. 

1. Measuring Cognitive Load, Australia patent application  2005903441, Chen, F., Choi, E., Ruiz., N.
2. Measuring Cognitive Load, Priority Date: 29 June 2005, PCT  Application No. PCT/AU2006/000914, Chen, F., Choi, E., Ruiz,  N.

1. Ruiz, N., Cheng, K. and Rittenbruch, M. Exploring Manual Interaction and Social Behaviour Patterns in Intensely Collaborative Teamwork. T. Gross et al. (Eds.): INTERACT 2009, Part I, LNCS 5726, pp. 578–581, 2009 (to appear).
2. Ruiz, N., Chen, F., and Oviatt, S. Multimodal Input. Chapter in Multi-modal signal Processing: Methods and Techniques to build Multimodal Interactive Systems. J.P. Thiran, H. Bourlard and F. Marque (eds). 2009. Elsevier.
3. Ruiz, N., Taib, R., Shi, Y., Choi, E. and Chen, F. Using Pen Input Features as Indices of Cognitive Load. Proc. 9th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI'07), Nagoya, Japan, Nov. 2007, 315-318.
4. Taib, R. and Ruiz, N. Integrating Semantics into Multimodal Interaction Patterns. Chapter in Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction. LNCS 4892, H. Bourlard, S. Renals, and A. Popescu-Belis, Eds. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2008, 96-107.
5. Taib, R., Ruiz, N. Wizard of Oz for Multimodal Interfaces Design: Deployment Considerations. Proc.12th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII2007), (Beijing, July 2007), 232-241.
6. Shi, Y., Ruiz, N., Taib, R., Choi, E. and Chen, F.,  Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) as an Index of Cognitive Load,  Proc. SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems  (CHI’07), San Jose, April/May 2007, pp. 2651-2656.
7. Ruiz, N., Taib, R., and Chen, F. Examining the redundancy of multimodal input. In Proc. 20th annual conference of the Australian computer-human interaction special interest group (OzCHI'06), (Sydney, Australia, 20-24 Nov 2006). (2006), 389-392.
8. Taib, R. and Ruiz, N. Tangible Objects for the Acquisition of Multimodal Interaction Patterns. In Proc. International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'06), (Genoa, Italy, 24-26 May 2006). (2006), 2540-2545.
9. Taib, R. and Ruiz, N. Multimodal Interaction Styles for Hypermedia Adaptation. In Proc. International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI'06), (Sydney, Australia, 30 January-1 February 2006). (2006), 351-353.
10. Taib, R. and Ruiz, N. Evaluating Tangible Objects for Multimodal Interaction Design. In Proc. 19th annual conference of the Australian computer-human interaction special interest group (OzCHI'05), (Canberra, Australia, 21-25 November 2005). CHISIG of Australia, Narrabundah, Australia, (2005), on CD.
11. Chen, F., Choi, E., Epps, J., Lichman, S., Ruiz, N., Shi, Y.,  Taib, R. and Wu, M., A Study of Manual Gesture-Based Selection  for the PEMMI Multimodal Transport Management Interface  Proc. 7th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI),  Trento, Italy, Oct. 2005, pp. 274-281.
12. Chen, F., Choi, E., Ruiz, N., Shi, Y. and Taib, R., User  Interface Design and Evaluation for Control Room, Proc. Annual  Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special  Interest Group (OzCHI’05), Canberra, Nov. 2005, on CD.