Researches and educates in the field where systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) need to collaborate with humans. Research spans basic research in AI to applications improving health.
Helena Lindgren has a multidisciplinary background as authorized occupational therapist, work consultant in work rehabilitation and ergonomics, and computer science. She is Professor in Computer Science, primarily operating in the intersection between artificial intelligence, interaction design and cognitive science. What she is actually doing, and has been doing throughout her working life, is to develop her understanding of humans, find conditions for development of ability, match ability to the environment and build the environment social, intelligent, adaptive and inspiring. Human-centred AI and Human-AI collaboration is at the core of her research.
Helena Lindgren takes particular interest in theories and methods that support the development of intelligent and autonomous systems for health care, which include and acknowledge the complexity of changing health care organisations and work processes in a larger perspective (sociotechnical system design) as well as the basic levels of cognitive and psychosocial functions. She takes particular interest in the following related to interacting with socially intelligent and autonomous systems and environments:
Research group and environment
Helena Lindgren established in 2010 the research group on user, interaction and knowledge modelling, renamed to Interactive Intelligent Systems, and in 2011 the laboratory (Collaborative AI Lab) for experimenting on topics related to interactive, intelligent, assistive and social environments. Lindgren has together with researchers initiated and developed the research environment UMeHealth, and extablished the lab UMeHealth Lab.
Research is conducted in collaboration with research groups mainly in the medical and health domains and with organisations in the local, national and interational society. The ACKTUS platform for knowledge engineering and interaction design developed by the research group functions as the research infrastructure in the applied collaborative projects, in addition to platform for experimenting on new solutions for user modelling and adaptive and personalised systems.
Commissions of Trust
National / International
Local
UMeHealth - An Infrastructure for eHealth Research, Education and Collaboration
Helena Lindgren is coordinating UMeHealth, a research environment eHealth-related topics at Umeå University. This is done in collaboration with researchers at the Medical Faculty and the Västerbotten County Council.
Helena Lindgren has been actively involved in the development of courses and education since 2002. She has developed a collaboration between computer science education and education at the medical and social science faculties on e-health and interactive intelligent environment topics, with a human-centred AI focus. This effort is partly funded by Vice-Chanchellor's strategic funds. Student projects are conducted in collaboration with industry and societal organisations since 2015. The complementary courses developed during the period are a part of the Master's program on Artificial Intelligence, running since 2020. Courses currently given are:
Interactivity in Smart Environments
Responsible Design of Interactive AI Systems
As part of the WASP-ED program she is developing an AI curriculum, taking on a multidisciplinary perspective on human-centred and trustworthy AI.