hester.jo [at] northeastern.edu
2026 [Publication] - Review of temperature and moisture management and mitigation techniques in prosthetic sockets and liners published in Prosthetics Orthotics International
2026 [Personal] - Collected 100 Tom and Jerry iOS stickers
2026 [Project] - PROVES Atlas CubeSat launched
2026 [Personal] - Monkey gallery published online
2025 [Project] - Plugin to execute KnitScript in vscode available
2025 [Publication] - Modular design for machine knitting (QUILT) paper published at UIST
2023 [Publication] - Feasability of the use of audio based ecological momentary assessment with persons with aphasia published at ASSETS
2021 [Personal] - Published my banana bread recipe
2021 [Publication] - Masters Thesis (predicting lyme disease with satellite and weather station data) available
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 work broadly falls within human-computer interaction (HCI), and currently lives in the domain of machine knitting, where I develop CAD tools and soft sensors.
I am currently 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 will be proposing my dissertation, Computational Tools for Modular Design, Visualization, and Debugging in Machine Knitting with Applications to Healthcare this fall; my thesis committe includes Drs. Hofmann, Varun Mishra, and Jim McCann. 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, where I was an interdisciplinary studies major in the Institute for the Liberal Arts. I was advised by Mark Risjord and Roberto Franzosi, and I completed a thesis that identified presecription medication side effects from online forums using a novel natural language processing technique. I subsequently earned my Master of Public Health from Brown University. I was advised by Tyler Wray, Shira Dunsiger, and Megan Ranney, and I completed a thesis on predicting lyme disease cases by county with satellite, weather station, and CDC data. I also worked for both the Brown Center for Evidence Synthesis 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 projects, listening to music, and making a lot of capuccinos.