Vera Kaelin is a postdoctoral scholar with a research interest and focus on using human-centered AI to customize participation- and activity-focused health promotion and re/habilitation services.
Vera Kaelin is an occupational therapist and re/habilitation scientist who is passionate about enabling people to participate in activities that are meaningful to them. Towards this end, her research interest and focus lie in the use of human-centered artificial intelligence to customize participation- and activity-focused health promotion and re/habilitation services toward clients’ needs and preferences. She completed her PhD in rehabilitation science at the University of Illinois Chicago (Children’s Participation and Environment Research Lab with Dr. Mary Khetani) and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the department of computing science at Umeå University with Dr. Helena Lindgren and her Interactive and Intelligent Systems research group.
During her PhD, Vera was mentored in research focusing on the development, testing, and implementation of the Participation and Environment Measure (PEM) approach to advance person-centered, technology-based, and participation-focused pediatric re/habilitation. This included the appraisal of current literature on the use of artificial intelliegence (AI) to customize participation-focused pediatric re/habilitation interventions and exploring the use of natural language processing to further customize the PEM approach.
As part of her postdoctoral training, Vera is building on her prior research experience and focus by expanding her knowledge and skills in human-centered AI. More specifically, she is being mentored in research focusing on customized and meaningful human-agent collaboration to support and simplify the delivery of activity-focused health promotion and re/habilitation services.