Muhammad Umair

I come from an engineering background and worked as a software developer before moving to a more research-oriented role at Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute, South Korea. I did Ph.D. from Lancaster University as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie ESR on EU Horizon 2020 project AffecTech - Personal technologies for affective health.

My Ph.D. research focused on designing and evaluating interactive interfaces for affective health. In particular, I designed wearable technologies for affect awareness and regulation and evaluated them in everyday life. I used biosensing data to detect an affective state and translated them into changes in visual and haptic materials for awareness and regulation of affect. I have conducted participatory design in my research with interaction designers, biomedical engineers, and mental health professionals.

I have also been working as a Senior Research Associate on Chatty Factories project at ImaginationLancaster in Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts on data-driven design for a downhill bike racing company. I collaborated with race engineers, bike designers, and riders to produce visualizations to predict and understand which and why a bike setup is faster on a particular race track.

I have now joined CDC (Center for Digital Citizens) to work with Prof. Abigail Durrant on the Well Citizen theme exploring how data and digital technologies can help us live well.