Michel C. Desmarais
Short Bio
Michel Desmarais is professor at the Computer and Software Engineering Department
of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal since 2002. His field of expertise is in the domains of
Human-Computer Interactions, e-learning, and Artificial Intelligence. He has 15 years of
experience in software project management. He was principal researcher of the
Human-Computer Interaction and Computerized Learning Environments groups at the Computer
Research Institute of Montreal between 1990 and 1998, where he directed a research program
in HCI and computer assisted learning, and was involved in a number of research projects in
close collaboration with private corporations. From 1998 to 2002, he was director of the
Web services department in a private company (mvm.com) and leader of a number of R&D
Web-based software projects. He is the author of about 100 scientific publications.
Research interest
- Student and user modeling
- User-centered software engineering
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Probabilistic modeling
- Recommender interfaces
Publications
Courses
- Design and Programming of User Interfaces (LOG2420)
- Software Project Management (INF3300)
- Intelligent Interfaces (INF6304)
Students
Current
- Alexandre Spaeth (Ph.D.)
- Nastaran Jafarpour (Ph.D.)
- Behzad Beheshti (Ph.D.)
- Soroosh Ghorbani (Ph.D.)
- Émile Ducrocq (M.Sc.A)
- Xu Peng (M.Sc.A)
Graduated
- François Lemieux, 2013 (Ph.D. - co-supervised with Pierre-N. Robillard)
- Shunkai Fu, 2010 (Ph.D.)
- Alexandre Plouznikoff, 2009 (Ph.D.)
- Olivier Gagnon, 2013 (M.Sc.A. - co-supervised with Michel Gagnon)
- Rhouma Naceur, 2013 (M.Sc.A)
- Waâd Kasmi, 2011 (M.Sc.A)
- André Jodoin, 2010 (M.Sc.A.)
- Alexandre Spaeth, 2009 (M.Sc.A. - co-supervised with Michel Gagnon)
- Alejandro Villarreal, 2009 (M.Sc.A.)
- Joël Migneault, 2008 (M.Sc.A. - co-supervised with Jean-Marc Robert)
- Beatriz Revello, 2008 (M.Sc.A. - co-supervised with Michel Gagnon)
- Shunkai Fu, 2006 (M.Sc.A.)
- Amir Masoud Oveissian, 2006 (M.Sc.A. - co-supervised with Michel Gagnon)
- Lei Ma, 2006 (M.Sc.A.)
- Abdelilah Abouelfoutouh, 2006 (M.Sc.A.)
- François Lemieux, 2005 (M.Sc.A.)
- Peyman Meshkinfam, 2005 (M.Sc.A.)
- Tamer Rafla, 2005 (M.Sc.A. with co-supervised)
- Xiao Ming Pu, 2005 (M.Sc.A.)
- Artur Wiklik, 2004 (M.Sc.A.)
- Rashin Esmaeli, 2011 (M.Ing.)
- Wilington Cortes, 2010 (M.Ing.)
- Belkacem Derfoul, 2006 (M.Ing.)
- Rafiou Oketokoun, 2005 (M.Ing.)
- Dan Tao, 2004 (M.Ing.)
Work experience
Education
Professional activities
Administrative duties
- Treasurer, Internationl Educational Data Mining Society (2011- )
- Member, advisory board of the CITE (Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Emerging Technologies) (2003-2008)
- Member, board of directors of Système Cognitifs Inc. (1997-1998)
- Member, scientific committee of FDT Interface project (Quebec gov., Virtual Prototypes, Adga) (1995-1997)
- Manager, industry-university grant program (1M$/y), CRIM, (1993-1996)
Journal Editorial Board
Conferences
General co-chair
- UMAP2012, The 20th conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization
Steering Committee
- EDM 2010, 2011, 2012, Educational Data Mining, (Pittsburg, Eindhoven, Chania)
Program Committee Co-chair
- EDM 2009, Educational Data Mining, Córdoba, Spain, 1-3 July 2009
- I2LOR 2007, User Centered Knowledge Environments: from Theory to Practice, 4th
Annual conference of the LORNET network of excellence, Montréal, Nov. 2007
- IHM-2006, 18ème journées sur l'ingénierie de l'interaction humain-machine, Montréal
(www.ihm2006.org)
Other co-chair positions
- IHM-2009, 20ème journées sur l'ingénierie de l'interaction humain-machine,
Grenoble, France (Industrial tracks--co-chair)
(www.ihm2009.org)
- First International Conference on Educational Data Mining, Montréal, June
2008. (Local organisation--co-chair)
- IHM-2008, 18ème journées sur l'ingénierie de l'interaction humain-machine,
Metz, France (Tutorials--co-chair)
(www.ihm2008.org)
- IEEE SMC'06, Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Montreal, Oct. 2007
(Publicity--co-chair)
Program Committee Member and reviewer
- UMAP 2010, Hawaii
- Edutational Data Mining 2008 (Montreal), 2009 (Cordoba, Spain), 2010 (Pittsburg), 2011 (Eindhoven)
- ITS 2010, Pittsburg
- EIAH 2009, Le Mans
- TICE 2008, Paris
- IHM 2008, 20ème journées sur l'ingénierie de l'interaction humain-machine,
Metz, France
- Ergo-IA 2006, 2007, 2008, Oct., Biarritz, France
- IASTED CI'2006, International Conference on Computational Intelligence, San Francisco
- IEEE IAT'06, Intelligent Agent Technology Hong-Kong, Dec. 2006
- Fifth International Conference on Human System Learning, Marrakech, Morroco, Nov. 2005 (scientific committee)
- Ergo-IA 2004, Oct., Biarritz, France
- Asia-Pacific Conf. on Intelligent Agent Technology, Dec. 1998
- Hong-Kong 2nd International Conf. on Multimodal Interfaces, Jan. 1998
- Graphics Interface'99, Kinston, Ont.
- Fourth International Conference on User Modeling, Hyannis, MA, 1994
- Canadian society for Computational Studies of Intelligence'92, Vancouver
Organizations
Selected Invited talks
- First international conference on Hybrid Learning, Hong-Kong, 2008, "Just-in-time knowledge for hybrid learning" (Plenary speaker)
- Maison des technologies de formation et d'apprentissage Roland-Giguère, "Models for skills representation in learning environments", 2007
- École Centrale de Lyon, "Probabilistic Knowledge Assessment", 2003
- Quebec Chamber of commerce, 1999, "Innovation on the Web"
- Canadian Institute, "Structured training, towards personalized training material",
1997
- Stanford University, CSLI Seminars, Palo Alto, "The use of Bayesian Networks for
knowledge assessment", 1996
- Information Highway Advisory Council of Canada, Ottawa, "Needs to support the
development of learning", 1995
