Katherine Mimnaugh

I am on the faculty job market for 2026.

I am a UIUC CS Future Faculty Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher working with Prof. Nancy Amato in the Parasol Lab. I completed a bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and worked for a decade as a lab manager in cognitive neuroscience research labs at UIUC in the Psychology department and Beckman Institute. I received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Oulu in Finland, where I studied immersive robotic telepresence with Prof. Steven LaValle. My interdisciplinary research bridges human-centered computing, human-robot interaction, virtual reality, and psychophysiology to investigate cognitive, physiological, and perceptual responses to interactions with technology. I leverage explicit and implicit measures to provide insight to technology design and build responsive systems. I am particularly interested in creating restorative technologies that benefit human health and well-being, as well as developing seamless and intuitive communication channels for the control of assistive robots through brain-computer interfaces and virtual reality. My research has been cited nearly 900 times, and received recognition with scholarships from Google and Nokia. I was also selected for Rising Stars in EECS at MIT in 2025.

Papers with Parasol Lab:

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