Jack Hester

About

I am a PhD candidate in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University and a member of the ACT (Accessible Creative Technologies) Lab run by Megan Hofmann. I really like to make things that I beleive will improve someone's experience, whether through creating new tool or software, or helping them feel connected through the arts. Due to my countless surgeries and doctor visits, I often find myself applying this interest to health sensing technologies and other medical or health applications. My doctoral research, which I expect to complete in 2027, focuses on improving personal health informatics. My work broadly falls within human-computer interaction (HCI), and currently lives at the intersection machine knitting CAD tools (with a goal of designing soft sensors), data visualization, and wearables. I am also affiliated with the Computational Behavioral Science Lab and the mHealth Research Group at Northeastern. I currrently serve as an accessibility chair for the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) conference and an accessibility advisory board member for the Arlington Center for the Arts. Before coming to Northeastern, I earned my bachelor's degree from Emory University (Institute for the Liberal Arts) and Master of Public Health from Brown University where I also worked for both the Center for Evidence Syntehsis in Health and Center for Digital Health, and taught a course on research methods. Outside of my doctoral research, I often spend my time gardening, at museums, working on art and writing proejcts, and making a lot of capuccinos.