Mmachi Obiorah

Edu cation

Northwestern University Illinois, USA

PhD. in Computer Science Aug. 2015 - Sep. 2020

Northwestern University Illinois, USA

MSc. in Computer Science Jan. 2014 - Mar. 2015

University of Jos Plateau State, Nigeria

BSc. in Computer Science Sep. 2005 - Apr. 2009

Ski lls

Programming Working knowledge of the following programming languages: Java (and Android programming), JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Python, C++. Also familiar with Swift, PHP and R.

Version Control Systems Familiar with Git and GitHub

Pro jects

OrderEat

I designed and built a software that makes use of its users’ location to retrieve restaurant menus from the Internet. OrderEat retrieves noun chunks from these menus,filters them through a food dictionary and associates them with images in real-time to support people with language disorders to order meals in unfamiliar restaurants.

PhotoSearch

I designed and built an AAC device on the Android platform that allows users to take photos of objects in the environment. The photos are associated with descriptive phases in real-time. The words within these phrase are also associated with more descriptive images in real-time to support independent word discovery for people with language disorders

Wor k Experience

University of Richmond

Visiting Assistant Professor Aug. 2021 - May 2023

Introduction to Computing

Data Structures

Human Computer Interaction

PairUp

Data Analytics Consultant Dec. 2020 - Present

Northwestern University

Instructor Jan. 2019

Building Mobile Applications for Android Devices

Northwestern University

Teaching Assistant

Tangible Interaction Design and Learning Mar. 2017

Northwestern University

Teaching Assistant

Human Computer Interaction Mar. 2016

University of Jos

Graduate Assistant

Introduction to Computer Science with Python Mar. 2016

Object Oriented Programming with C++

Hon ors & Awards

2021 Best Paper Award ACM (CHI)

2017 Microsoft Diversity Conference Scholarship Microsoft

2016 Segal Design Fellowship Northwestern University

2012 Presidential Special Scholarship for Innovation and Development for Graduate Studies Abuja, Nigeria

2009 National Association for Women Academics(NAWACS) Prize for Best Graduating Female Student in the Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Jos, Nigeria

Pub lication

Mmachi God'sglory Obiorah, Anne Marie Marie Piper, and Michael Horn. 2021. Designing AACs for People with Aphasia Dining in Restaurants. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 496, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445280

Obiorah, M. G., Hammerman, J. K., Rother, B., Granger, W., West, H. M., Horn, M., & Trouille, L. (2021, May). U! Scientist: Designing for People-Powered Research in Museums. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14). (Best Paper Award. Top 1% of submissions)

M.Obiorah,A.M.Piper,M.Horn. Independent Word Discovery for People with Aphasia. Poster presented in Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conferenceon Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’17).

M.Obiorah, E.Harburg, M.Bos, M.Horn. JumpGym: Exploring the Impact of a Jumping Exergame for Waiting Areas. Spotlight paper presented in Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts(CHIPLAYCompanion ’17).

M.Obiorah, E.Harburg, J. Franklin, B. Downs, S. Ye, M. Bos, M. Horn. (2016) JumpGym: A Jumping Exergame for Waiting Areas in GLS12 Conference Proceedings.

Beheshti, E., Obiorah, M. and Horn, M.S., 2015, June. Let’s dive into it!: Learning electricity with multiple representations. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 263-266). ACM.