Name: Nicholas Garcia
 
Hometown: Miami, Florida
 
Year in program:  4th Year
 
Research Interest: My research interests include perception-action and human-robot interaction. I’m interested in exploring how people perceive other people’s abilities to perform actions and the information people attend when doing so. One day, I hope this research might also help us design robots that can judge other people’s abilities to perform actions. For example, this research could help design caretaker robots that can correctly judge whether our grandmothers can safely reach for a can of soup on the top shelf of their kitchens. If it’s too risky for our grandmothers to do so, a caretaker robot can then offer assistance
 
Career Aspirations: Once I graduate, I would love to be a part of a collaborative and creative research team at the industry level. Within this team, I hope to work with my peers to produce impactful human factors and user experience research that will help improve our users’ lives. With this mission in mind, I hope my Texas Tech education will offer me the chance to utilize my HF training globally to help others.
 
Fun Fact: I’ve been able to travel to over 50 countries around the world. My favorite countries I’ve visited so far include Japan and South Africa.  ­
 
Advice to younger students: Never to be too hard on yourself! Grad school will always be about growth. If you learn from both your success and failures, and give your best effort, I promise you will leave grad school as a better person and researcher.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our chapter members were able to get together and have a virtual happy hour. We want to say thank you to everyone that attended. We also want to give a special thanks to Chapter President Tiffany Lui for coordinating the event. 

We hope everyone is staying safe during these times!

We want to give a special thank you to Dana Wilder for speaking to the chapter. Dana is a graduate student at Texas Tech’s College of Technical Communication and Rhetoric with a concentration in Human-Centered Design and User Experience Research

Dana presented to chapter members on how to design our own project portfolios and provided some excellent tips for future job searching. 

Congratulations to Natalie Lodinger for her UX Research internship at Dataminr in New York City!

​From their website:

“Dataminr is recognized as one of the world's leading AI businesses. The company’s clients are the first to know about high-impact events and emerging risks so they can mitigate and manage crises more effectively. Dataminr solutions are relied on 24/7 by hundreds of clients in over 70 countries to help them solve real-world problems. Dataminr is one of New York's top private technology companies, with nearly 650 employees across seven global offices.”
We're proud of you Natalie!