Hasti Seifi

Math and physics have fascinated Hasti Seifi since her high school days. During this time, she also took an interest in psychology and understanding human perception and cognition. Merging these two areas helped her discover her true passion: human-computer interaction, which combines engineering and psychology.

Seifi specializes in researching haptics, the field of designing touch interfaces for electronics.

“I find it fascinating because there are many unknowns about human touch perception and new haptic technologies emerge every few years, so it’s very exciting,” she says. “It also has many links with robotics, especially for designing robots that can understand physical interactions with the world and people.”

Seifi will continue exploring her passion in her new role as an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, one of the seven schools in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University.

“I was drawn to ASU because of its strong computer science and engineering schools, and I had very positive impressions of the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, its culture and its faculty relationships,” she says. “My academic mentors all thought very highly of ASU as well.”

As she prepares to teach a graduate-level emerging interface technologies course this fall semester, Seifi says her students should have an interest in technology, people and a background in programming. She says it is also helpful to have a background in human-computer interaction, although it is not a requirement for the course.

“I am excited to work with robotics at ASU,” Seifi says. “It also seems that working across schools is much more common here, which is something that I’m looking forward to exploring.”

In her previous work experience, Seifi’s notable accomplishments include receiving a postdoctoral fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and receiving a four-year fellowship while earning her doctoral degree at the University of British Columbia. Her doctoral degree research led her to win the 2017 EuroHaptics Society PhD Thesis Award for the best doctorate thesis in the field of haptics, a prestigious honor only awarded to one person each year.

When she’s not teaching, Seifi likes to practice the Iranian flute.

Meet the newest faculty members of the Fulton Schools of Engineering here.

Written by Annelise Krafft