“Hooked on a Feeling: Quantifying Emotions in US Politics” — A Mellon Digital Humanities Conversation with Cantay Çalışkan

The Andrew W. Mellon Fellows in the Digital Humanities are pleased to announce their second DigiTalk of the Spring 2022 semester. This session on March 17th at 3 PM will feature a conversation with Cantay Çalışkan, an assistant professor of instruction at the Goergen Institute for Data Science at the University of Rochester.

In this DigiTalk, Dr. Cantay Çalışkan will discuss his innovative quantitative framework for analyzing the emotions of candidates in US presidential debates and the significance of these emotions in determining who holds our nation’s highest office. Using multinomial probabilistic machine learning and deep learning algorithms along with the help of face recognition, speech-to-text conversion, and speaker diarization techniques, Çalışkan has dynamically quantified emotion from 25 presidential debates, illuminating both the theoretical and political importance of emotions and the public’s perception of politicians.

Cantay Çalışkan is an assistant professor of instruction at the Goergen Institute for Data Science at the University of Rochester. He studied political science, computer science, and statistics during his Ph.D., and received his degree from Boston University in 2018. Cantay received his BA from Brandeis University and his MA from Koç University. Before joining the University, he was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Data Analytics at Denison University and a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Ohio Wesleyan University. His research interests include computational social science, emotion quantification and face/gesture recognition, social media, US Congress, and networks of lobbying.

For more information about this event, visit the RSVP links above and below, or contact mwoehl@ur.rochester.edu.

Being Human, Being Robot: A DigiTalk featuring Andrew John Wit

Tuesday, April 13, 2021, at 3:30pm to 4:45pm via Zoom.

Register for this free event here.

Event Description:

Andrew John Wit is an Associate Professor at the Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture, where he leads research in emerging technologies and their relationship to the built environment. He is a co-editor of the book Towards a Robotic Architecture, an associate editor for the journal Construction Robotics, and an elected editor for the International Journal of Architectural Computing. His work has been presented and published in a wide range of international conferences, journals, and galleries. Andrew is also the Co-Founder of WITO* (pronounced we – toe), Laboratory for Intelligent Environments.

In this talk, Andrew will discuss novel tools, methods, and materials that are helping to redefine the design discipline and the built environment. Typically situated either within the arts or engineering, this talk will discuss how the field of architectural design has been transformed through the integration of AI, robotics, mixed reality, and novel composite materials and their relationship to human makers and inhabitants.

Event Video: