I am a Research Scientist in the IntelliMedia Group within the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, Managing Director of the NSF AI Institute for Engaged Learning, and a member of the Center for Educational Informatics. My work focuses on designing, developing, and evaluating advanced learning technologies, with an emphasis on game-based learning environments, intelligent tutoring systems, multimodal learning analytics, intelligent narrative technologies, affective computing, and user modeling. More broadly, my research is at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, with applications in education, training, and healthcare. Its principal objective is to understand how computational methods can enable technology-rich learning experiences that are both highly effective and engaging.

My research has been recognized with several best paper awards, including best paper at the Seventh International Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE-2011) and best paper at the Second International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN-2008). I also led development efforts on several game-based learning projects, including Crystal Island: Lost Investigation, which was nominated for Best Serious Game at the 2012 Unity Awards and the 2012 I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase and Challenge.  I have served as Program Chair and General Chair for the Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, and I currently serve on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education and IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. 

I joined NC State in the Fall of 2006 as a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. The previous Spring I graduated from Lafayette College, a small liberal arts school in eastern Pennsylvania. At Lafayette, I studied Computer Science and Mathematics, and competed for the Lafayette Men’s Track and Field Team, eventually earning ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District Honors. During Summer 2007, I worked at the Institute for Creative Technologies investigating a story authoring support tool called ReQUEST. A few years later, I spent Summer 2011 in the SAS Institute’s Education Practice developing a prototype iPad app to support self-regulated learning in K-12 schools. In 2013, I completed my dissertation under the direction of Dr. James Lester, which investigated a modular reinforcement learning framework for narrative-centered tutorial planning in game-based learning environments.

CV (Updated: May 2021)

Education

Ph.D., Computer Science (2013)
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

M.S., Computer Science (2010)
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

B.S., Computer Science (2006)
Lafayette College, Easton, PA

Honors

Best Paper Award – AIIDE 2011
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award 2008
Best Paper Award – INTETAIN 2008
NCSU Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, 2006-2008
Lafayette College Trustee Scholar, 2002-2006
Member: Phi Kappa Phi, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, Pi Mu Epsilon

Selected Publications

Fahid, F., Rowe, J., Spain, R., Goldberg, B., Pokorny, R., & Lester, J. Adaptively Scaffolding Cognitive Engagement with Batch Constrained Deep Q-Networks. To appear in Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-2021), Virtual, 2021. [PDF]

Rowe, J. & Lester, J. Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Preventive Healthcare. Journal of Adolescent Health, 67(2), Supplement, S52-S58, 2020. [PDF]

Taub, M., Sawyer, R., Smith, A., Rowe, J., Azevedo, R., and Lester, J. The Agency Effect: The Impact of Student Agency on Learning, Emotions, and Problem-Solving Behaviors in a Game-Based Learning Environment. Computers & Education, 147, 103781, 2020. [PDF]

Emerson, A., Henderson, N., Rowe, J., Min, W., Lee, S., Minogue, J., & Lester, J. Early Prediction of Visitor Engagement in Science Museums with Multimodal Learning Analytics. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Second ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI-2020), Utrecht, the Netherlands, pp. 107-116, 2020. [PDF]

Geden, M., Emerson, A., Rowe, J., Azevedo, R., and Lester, J. Predictive Student Modeling in Educational Games with Multi-Task Learning. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2020), New York, NY, pp. 654-661, 2020. [PDF]

Henderson, N., Rowe, J., Paquette, L., Baker, R., & Lester, J. Improving Affect Detection in Game-Based Learning with Multimodal Data Fusion. In Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-2020), Ifrane, Morocco, pp. 228-239, 2020. [PDF]

Wang, P., Rowe, J., Min, W., Mott, B., & Lester, J. (2017). Interactive Narrative Personalization with Deep Reinforcement Learning. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-2017), pp. 3852-3858, Melbourne, Australia. [PDF]

Sabourin, J., Rowe, J., Mott, B., & Lester, J. (2013). Considering Alternate Futures to Classify Off-Task Behavior as Emotion Self-Regulation: A Supervised Learning Approach. Journal of Educational Data Mining, 5(1), 9-38, 2013. [PDF]

Rowe, J., Shores, L., Mott, B., & Lester, J. (2011). Integrating Learning, Problem Solving, and Engagement in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 21(1-2), 115-133. [PDF]

Ha, E.Y., Rowe, J., Mott, B., & Lester, J. (2011). Goal Recognition with Markov Logic Networks for Player-Adaptive Games. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE-2011), pp. 32-39, Palo Alto, California. [PDF]

A more comprehensive list is available on Google Scholar.