Amama Mahmood
Johns Hopkins University. Balimore, MD, USA.
I am on the job market. Please reach out if you know any opportunities! đź“„ CV
I am Malone Postdoc Fellow in Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare & Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. I am co-advised by Dr. Chien-Ming Huang, Dr. Ziang Xiao, and Dr. Paul Yi, MD.
My research, situated at the intersection of HCI and Health, focuses on enhancing human-machine interactions to support health and well-being. Specifically, I develop AI assistants-powered by LLMs-that enable seamless, adaptive interactions by understanding user behaviors in various real-world contexts. I design, develop and evaluate AI assistants that support personal health and well-being through continuous, personalized assistance and augment clinical practices effectively and seamlessly. With a focus on empowering special populations such as older adults in managing their health to facilitate aging in place, my work emphasizes situated, long-term, sustainable, “in the wild” human-machine interactions.
Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, Human-AI Interaction, Human-Centered AI, Human-Robot Interaction, Health, Assistive Technologies, AI assistants, Conversational Agents, Large Language Models, Human-Subjects Research
Selected Awards and Achievements
Malone Postdoctoral Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University 2025 – Present
Computer Science Department Fellowship , Johns Hopkins University 2020 – 2021
Creel Family Engineering Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University 2020 – 2021
Fullbright Scholarship 2018 – 2020
Teaching and Mentoring
Course Instructor, Human-Robot Interaction (EN.601.491/691) at Johns Hopkins University Spring 2025
Teaching Assistant, HRI and HCI courses at Johns Hopkins University 2020, 2021
Journal Club Organizer, Intuitive Computing Lab at Johns Hopkins University 2020 – 2023
Student Mentor, Johns Hopkins University 2020 – Present
Mentored high school, undergraduates and graduate students
Academic and Community Service
Reviewer: CHI'26, CHI'25 (special mention), CHI'24 (special mention), HRI'21, CSCW'23, THRI, IJHCS, ICMI'20
Member of Robotics Graduate Student Association: Johns Hopkins University 2020 – 2024
Organizer Lab Hackathon: Lab Hackathon on integrating LLMs into voice assistants and robots Summer 2023
Organizer Community Outreach Expo: A community outreach exhibition at a local senior living center Summer 2024
Invited Talks
Designing Conversational Agents to Empower People and Promote Well-Being
Department of Computer Science, George Mason University May 2025
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Brown Bag & CS Seminar, Johns Hopkins University April 2025
Human-Centered AI Class, Northeastern University Feburary 2025
Human-AI Interaction for Healthcare: Through the Lens of Radiology
Session: Bridging the Gap: Mitigating Bias, Building Trust, and Mastering Human-AI Collaboration at
the Annual meeting of Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) May 2025
Latest Posts
Malone symposium poster session awardees 2026
Talking robots learn to manage human interruptions 2025
Explain yourself: Designing AI for better human-machine teaming 2025
Selected Publications
- Under review
Re-imagining Behavioral Sleep Medicine: Designing Conversational Sleep Diary and Visualization ToolUnder review, 2025 - Under review
Situated Understanding of Older Adults’ Interactions with Voice Assistants: A Month-long In-home StudyACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 2024 - AiP-AAAI FS’24
From Our Lab to Their Homes: Learnings from Longitudinal Field Research with Older AdultsAAAI Fall Symposium Series; Aging in Place, 2024 - CSCW’24
Gender Biases in Error Mitigation by Voice AssistantsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2024 - IVA’22
Effects of rhetorical strategies and skin tones on agent persuasiveness in assisted decision-makingIn Proceedings of the 22nd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, 2022 - CHI’22
Owning Mistakes Sincerely: Strategies for Mitigating AI ErrorsIn CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022 - CSCW’25
"Mango Mango, How to Let The Lettuce Dry Without A Spinner?": Exploring User Perceptions of Using An LLM-Based Conversational Assistant Toward Cooking PartnerAccepted for Publication at Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2025 - RSNA 2024
Care to Explain? AI Explanation Types Differentially Impact Chest Radiograph Diagnostic Performance and Physician Trust in AIRadiology, 2024*equal contribution - RSS’25
Interruption Handling for Conversational RobotsAccepted to be published at Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems, 2025 - Under review
"You Might Like It": How People Respond to Small Talk in Human-Robot CollaborationUnder review: Human–Computer Interaction, 2023