We are hiring! At the ACE Lab, we are working to transform computing experiences by adapting users' experiences to their cognitive processes. In today's world, Computing has evolved beyond programmatic and mathematical operations. People's interactions with computers range from developers building software to people monitoring their heartbeat during exercises on wearable devices. However, these experiences are often unintuitive, stale, and require humans to adapt to the machine. We aim to build experiences that adapt to the users, for activities ranging from programming to lifestyle. Several of our award-winning research uses empirical, qualitative, and quantitative means to drive impactful change to real-world products.
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our team
Souti Chattopadhyay profile photo

Souti Chattopadhyay

is the PI of ACE Lab and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at USC. She works in HCI and Software Engineering.home logolinkedin logoscholar logotwitter logo
Athena Saghi profile photo

Athena Saghi

is a first year Ph.D. Student. She graduated from Sharif University of Technology with a BSc in Computer Engineering. Her research interests are in Cognitive Computing and AI.home logolinkedin logo
Jade H profile photo

Jade H

is a third year Ph.D. Student. They graduated from Yale University with a BSc in Computer Science and Physics. Their research interests are in Computer Science Education.
Philipp Eibl profile photo

Philipp Eibl

is a first year Ph.D. Student. He graduated from University of Toronto with a BSc in Computer Science. His research interests are in Codebase agents and HAI.home logolinkedin logoscholar logo
Run Huang profile photo

Run Huang

is a first year Ph.D. Student. He graduated from Fudan University with a BSc in Computer Science. His research interests are in Intelligent User Interfaces.home logolinkedin logoscholar logo
Sadra Sabouri profile photo

Sadra Sabouri

is a first year Ph.D. Student. He graduated from Sharif University of Technology with a BSc in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests are in Software Engineering and HAI.home logolinkedin logoscholar logo
Xinyi Zhou profile photo

Xinyi Zhou

is a 2nd year M.S. Student at USC. She graduated from SUSTech with a BEng in Computer Science. Her research interests are in Interaction Design and HAI.linkedin logo
Meghana Bhat profile photo

Meghana Bhat

is a 1st year M.S. Student at USC. She graduated with a BEng in Information Science. Her interests include ideation, development and maintenance of software products, full-stack development and HCI.linkedin logo
David Aoyama profile photo

David Aoyama

is an Undergraduate Researcher at USC. He is working with Athena.linkedin logo
Aman Kumar profile photo

Aman Kumar

is an Undergraduate Researcher at USC. He is working with Philipp.linkedin logo
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ace projects
Science in Stack Overflow

Exploring references to academic literature on Stack Overflow (SO) to understand how scientific knowledge diffuses into this practitioner-centric forum.

Run Huang's avatar Run Huang
Souti Chattopadhyay's avatar Souti Chattopadhyay
Sustainable Software Engineering

Redefining the notion of sustainability for software projects, investigate various open-source and industrial projects to derive metrics, and help future engineers build sustainable software.

Katie Foss's avatar Katie Foss
Athena Saghi's avatar Athena Saghi
Souti Chattopadhyay's avatar Souti Chattopadhyay
Trustworthy AI code generation

Developing a method to ensure trustworthy AI-generated code suggestions through statistical tools and program analysis techniques.

Sadra Sabouri's avatar Sadra Sabouri
Souti Chattopadhyay's avatar Souti Chattopadhyay
Codebase Generation Model Evaluation

The project examines the performance of AI in creating codebases, assessing developer experience and code effectiveness.

Philipp Eibl's avatar Philipp Eibl
Souti Chattopadhyay's avatar Souti Chattopadhyay
Expanding the Scope of Changes Made by Code Prompts

Exploring the limitations of current automatic code suggestion models in generating complete code bases from abstract prompts and proposing a human-in-the-loop framework to extend their capabilities

Sadra Sabouri's avatar Sadra Sabouri
Souti Chattopadhyay's avatar Souti Chattopadhyay
Cognitive control and intervention in autonomous systems

To design good collaboration in human-autonomous system, we need to understand the cognitive barriers in humans and provide good explanation/intervention systems. In these projects, we look at different autonomous systems and study how human cognition needs support for seamless and safe operations.

Athena Saghi's avatar Athena Saghi
Souti Chattopadhyay's avatar Souti Chattopadhyay
Ace opportunities
Join us
ACE lab is HIRING ! We have openings for PhD students in Fall 2025. If you are interested, please fill in this form!

Please do not email Prof. Chattopadhyay directly. She would be unable to respond promptly owing to the high volume of emails she receives.

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Recent Publications
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ace alumni
Katie Foss profile photo

Katie Fossalumni logo

is a M.S. graduate at USC. She now works as a Software Engineer at Salesforce.linkedin logo
Brice Carter profile photo

Brice Carteralumni logo

is an Undergraduate Researcher at USC.linkedin logo