CS SEMINAR:Stress Recognition and Alleviation by Using Wearables and Immersive Technologies

Guest: Yekta Said Can, Birmingham City University
Title: Stress Recognition and Alleviation by Using Wearables and Immersive Technologies
Abstract: The detrimental effects of mental stress on human health have been known for decades, and it has now developed into a major concern in our modern society, where it is regarded as a rising problem and an inevitable part of our everyday life. If stress is not recognized early, it can lead to a variety of diseases and major health problems, including hypertension and coronary disease, irritable bowel syndrome, gastroesophageal reflux disease, generalized anxiety disorder, and depression. In this talk, some experiments for recognizing stress by using unobtrusive wearables in different environments, such as a laboratory, real-life events, and in the wild, will be mentioned. After that, methods for improving relatively low performance in the wild will be discussed. Privacy-preserving stress recognition approaches will also be explained. The talk will be concluded after a discussion on Immersive Technologies for alleviating stress and their performance for decreasing stress levels.

Bio: Yekta Said CAN received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from Bogazici University, TURKEY, in 2012, 2014, and 2020, respectively. He also worked as a Teaching Assistant at Bogazici University for six years during his PhD. After obtaining his PhD degree, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ERC project (UrbanOccupations) at Koc University for applying computer vision techniques to retrieve information from historical documents for two years. As a postdoctoral researcher, he worked on recognizing emotions and stress for another two years at Augsburg University. He is currently a Lecturer at Birmingham City University, UK. His research interests include biometrics, document analysis, physiological signal processing, affective and wearable computing, and machine learning.