Elena Agapie

Elena Agapie serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics within the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, a position she has held since 2020. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington (2020), an M.S. in Computer Science from Harvard University (2013), and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany (2009). Agapie's research specializes in human-computer interaction, human-centered design, social computing, and health informatics. She designs tools that empower people to integrate healthy behaviors into their lives by balancing evidence-driven interventions from health and behavioral sciences with individual needs. Examples include social computing systems for exercise planning using crowd advice informed by experts, and conversational agents to assist patients with low health literacy in emergency rooms.

Prior to her faculty role, Agapie worked as a research intern or staff at Microsoft Research, Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Research Lab, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Intel Labs. Her contributions have earned prestigious recognitions such as the CHI 2017 Best Paper Award for "Examining Menstrual Tracking to Inform the Design of Personal Informatics Tools," the HCOMP 2015 Best Paper Award for "Crowdsourcing in the Field: A Case Study Using Local Crowds for Event Reporting," and CHI 2016 Best Paper Honorable Mention. Notable publications also encompass "When personal tracking becomes social: Examining the use of Instagram for healthy eating" (2017), "Plansourcing: Generating behavior change plans with friends and crowds" (2016), and "Technology's Role in Fostering Therapist-Client Collaboration and Engagement with Goals" (2024). Agapie actively participates in academic service, serving as Associate Chair on program committees for CHI and CSCW, co-chairing CSCW Doctoral Consortium, and contributing to UCI Informatics committees including PhD admissions and seminar coordination. Her work is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and University of California, Irvine.

Professional Email: eagapie@uci.edu