Alexandra Papoutsaki

Associate Professor of Computer Science; Chair of Computer Science
With Pomona Since: 2017
  • Expertise

    Expertise

    Alexandra Papoutsaki works in human-computer interaction. Her primary research focuses on personal informatics, particularly in family and health contexts, as well as eye tracking to support remote collaborations.

    Research Interests

    • Studying and building technology that supports family and personal health goals
    • Effects of shared gaze on remote collaborations

    Areas of Expertise

    • Human-Computer Interaction
    • Personal Informatics
    • Eye Tracking
    • Shared Gaze for Remote Collaborations
  • Work

    Work

    “Understanding Adoption, Use, and Abandonment Practices in Baby Tracking,” Alexandra Papoutsaki, Mustafa Taha Dişbudak, Lily Galvan, Daniel A. Epstein. (2026) In Proceedings of the 2026 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

    “Understanding Temporality of Reflection in Personal Informatics through Baby Tracking,” Julianne Louie, Tara Mukund, Chau Vu, Daniel A. Epstein, Alexandra Papoutsaki. (2025) In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

    “EyeDraw: Investigating the Perceived Effects of Shared Gaze on Remote Collaborative Drawing,” Eryn Ma, Priya Dixit, Andy Ha, Nicholas Marsano, Brooke Sparks, Ashley Sun, Lucas Tiangco, Tongyu Zhou, Jeff Huang, Alexandra Papoutsaki. (2025) In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 9, GROUP, Article 17.

    “Exploring Patient-Generated Annotations to Digital Clinical Symptom Measures to Promote Patient-Centered Communication,” Eunkyung Jo, Rachael Zehrung, Katherine E. Genuario, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Daniel A. Epstein. (2024) In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 8, CSCW2, Article 359.

    “Webcam-based eye tracking to detect mind wandering and comprehension errors,” Stephen Hutt, Aaron Wong, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Ryan S. Baker, Joshua I. Gold, Caitlin Mills. (2023) In Behavior Research Methods.

    “Readability Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach,” Sofie Beier, Sam Berlow, Esat Boucaud, Zoya Bylinskii, Tianyuan Cai, Jenae Cohn, Kathy Crowley, Stephanie L Day, Tilman Dingler, Jonathan Dobres, Jennifer Healey, Rajiv Jain, Marjorie Jordan, Bernard Kerr, Qisheng Li, Dave B Miller, Susanne Nobles, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Jing Qian, Tina Rezvanian, Shelley Rodrigo, Ben D Sawyer, Shannon M Sheppard, Bram Stein, Rick Treitman, Jen Vanek, Shaun Wallace, Benjamin Wolfe. (2022) In Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction.

    “The elephant in the room: attention to salient scene features increases with comedic expertise,” Ori Amir, Konrad J. Utterback, Justin Lee, Kevin S. Lee, Suehyun Kwon, Dave M. Carroll, Alexandra Papoutsaki. (2022) In Cognitive Processing.

    “Designing Flexible Longitudinal Regimens: Supporting Clinician Planning for Discontinuation of Psychiatric Drugs,” Eunkyung Jo, Myeonghan Ryu, Georgia Kenderova* Samuel So, Bryan Shapiro, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Daniel A. Epstein. (2022) In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

    “Understanding Delivery of Collectively Built Protocols in an Online Health Community for Discontinuation of Psychiatric Drugs”, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Samuel So, Georgia Kenderova, Bryan Shapiro, Daniel A. Epstein (2021). In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5 (CSCW2): 420, 1-29.

    “Case Studies on the Motivation and Performance of Contributors Who Verify and Maintain In-Flux Tabular Datasets”, Shaun Wallace, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Neilly H. Tan, Hua Guo, Jeff Huang (2021). In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5 (CSCW2): 448, 1-25.

    “Effects of Shared Gaze on Audio- Versus Text-Based Remote Collaborations,” Grete Helena Kütt, Teerapaun Tanprasert, Jay Rodolitz, Bernardo Moyza, Samuel So, Georgia (2020). In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 4 (CSCW2):136, 1-25.

    “Eye-Write: Gaze Sharing for Collaborative Writing,” Grete Helena Kütt, Kevin Lee, Ethan Hardacre, Alexandra Papoutsaki (2019). In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

    “The Eye of the Typer: A Benchmark and Analysis of Gaze Behavior during Typing,” Alexandra Papoutsaki, Aaron Gokaslan, James Tompkin, Yuze He, Jeff Huang (2018). In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA).

    “Remotion: A Motion-Based Capture and Replay Platform of Mobile Device Interaction for Remote Usability Testing,” Jing Qian, Arielle Chapin, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Fumeng Yang, Klaas Nelissen, Jeff Huang (2018). In ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT).

    “Lessons Learned from Two Cohorts of Personal Informatics Self-Experiments,” Nediyana Daskalova, Karthik Desingh, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Diane Schulze, Han Sha, Jeff Huang (2017). In Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT).

    “SearchGazer: Scalable Webcam Eye Tracking for Remote Studies of Web Search,” Alexandra Papoutsaki, James Laskey, Jeff Huang (2017). In Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction & Retrieval (CHIIR).

    “WebGazer: Scalable Eye Tracking Using User Interactions,” Alexandra Papoutsaki, Patsorn Sangkloy, James Laskey, Nediyana Daskalova, Jeff Huang, James Hays (2016). In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference in Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).

    “Crowdsourcing from Scratch: A Pragmatic Experiment in Data Collection by Novice Requesters,” Alexandra Papoutsaki, Hua Guo, Danae Metaxa-Kakavouli, Connor Gramazio, Jeff Rasley, Wenting Xie, Guan Wang, Jeff Huang (2015). In Proceedings of the 3rd AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP).

    “Accurate Computation of Survival Statistics in Genome-Wide Studies,” Fabio Vandin, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Benjamin J. Raphael, Eli Upfal (2015). In Plos Computational Biology.

    “Pan-cancer network analysis identifies combinations of rare somatic mutations across pathways and protein complexes,” Mark D M Leiserson, Fabio Vandin, Hsin-Ta Wu, Jason R Dobson, Jonathan V Eldridge, Jacob L Thomas, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Younhun Kim, Beifang Niu, Michael McLellan, Michael S Lawrence, Abel Gonzalez-Perez, David Tamborero, Yuwei Cheng, Gregory A Ryslik, Nuria  Lopez-Bigas, Gad Getz, Li Ding, Benjamin J Raphael (2015). In Nature Genetics.

    “Genome-Wide Survival Analysis of Somatic Mutations in Cancer,” Fabio Vandin, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Benjamin J. Raphael, Eli Upfal (2013). In Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB).

  • Education

    Education

    Ph.D., Computer Science, Brown University

    M.Sc., Computer Science, Brown University

    B.Sc., Computer Science, Athens University of Economics and Business

  • Awards & Honors

    Awards & Honors

    Pomona College, Wig Distinguished Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2020, 2026

    Honorable Mention Award, ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2025

    National Science Foundation CRII Grant, “Gaze Sharing to Support Remote Collaboration,” 2020-2024

    Best Paper Award, Annual International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), 2013