About

Holly Jimison is an affiliated faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and holds the position of Professor of Practice at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on technology-based health interventions aimed at successful aging and scalable remote care. She has been involved in projects such as creating a 'Self-powered Smart Ring for Always-On Health Interventions,' which received a $300K NSF grant, demonstrating her commitment to developing innovative solutions for health monitoring and intervention. Her work has contributed to advancing remote health care technologies and improving health outcomes through scalable, technology-driven approaches.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Knowledge management
• Political Science
• Internet privacy
• Data science
• Psychology
• Multimedia
• Nursing
• Medicine
• Human–computer interaction
• Applied psychology
• Database

Selected publications

• "Mango Mango, How to Let The Lettuce Dry Without A Spinner?": Exploring User Perceptions of Using An LLM-Based Conversational Assistant Toward Cooking Partner

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2025-10-16 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has created numerous potentials for integration with conversational assistants (CAs) assisting people in their daily tasks, particularly due to their extensive flexibility. However, users' real-world experiences interacting with these assistants remain unexplored. In this research, we chose cooking, a complex daily task, as a scenario to explore people's successful and unsatisfactory experiences while receiving assistance from an LLM-based CA, Mango Mango . We discovered that participants value the system's ability to offer customized instructions based on context, provide extensive information beyond the recipe, and assist them in dynamic task planning. However, users expect the system to be more adaptive to oral conversation and provide more suggestive responses to keep them actively involved. Recognizing that users began treating our LLM-CA as a personal assistant or even a partner rather than just a recipe-reading tool, we propose five design considerations for future development.

  PublisherDOI

• A systematic review of unmet needs of older adults in home settings and their implications for novel technological solutions

  Innovation in Aging · 2025-10-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Background and Objectives: To better support aging in place, we first must understand the needs of the older adult population. We conducted a systematic review to understand the needs of older adults in the home. Research Design and Methods: We queried the PubMed, CINAHL, and ProQuest databases to identify literature related to needs assessments of older adults in the home. Records were included if: (1) the population focused on older adults (aged 65 years and older); (2) a needs assessment was conducted; (3) the older adult population was aging in place and not in a long-term care facility; (4) English language publication; (5) published since 2013; and (6) pertaining solely to older adult caregivers' needs. The needs identified in each article were extracted and categorized based on emergent themes. Results: A total of 1,963 records were identified. After removing duplicate records and those not meeting the inclusion criteria, 65 articles were included in the final analysis. Six need-related theme domains were identified: health management needs; social needs; homecare and practical needs; information needs; technology needs; and healthcare system needs. Discussion and Implications: Through the systematic review, we identified a wide range of unmet needs for older adults aging in the home. The unmet needs of older adults are multifaceted and provide ideal targets for the development of novel technological solutions. In particular, recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI such as large language models (LLMs), surface the potential for technology to address unmet needs across multiple domains. We discuss the potential for AI to lower barriers to technology uptake for older adults and create novel solutions to each of the need domains identified. Ultimately, AI-enabled solutions may increase independence for older adults and potentially increase the ability to age in place.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Human Computer Interaction in Consumer Health Applications: Current State, Challenges and Future

  Cognitive informatics in biomedicine and healthcare · 2024-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Let’s Walk: A Quasi-Experimental Multi-Component Intervention to Improve Physical Activity and Social Engagement for Older Chinese American Adults

  Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health · 2024-02-13

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Physical activity (PA) is critical for healthy aging, yet < 16% of U.S. older adults meet federal recommendations for moderate to vigorous PA. Asian Americans are a rapidly growing segment of the older adult population, who are less likely to meet these guidelines, and are frequently under-represented in clinical trials. This quasi-experimental pilot study evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of a culturally tailored walking program to improve PA and social engagement for older Chinese Americans in Boston, MA. Participants at two community organizations were assigned to an enhanced walking or walking only condition for 12 weeks. Mixed effect repeated measures analysis addressed the study aims. The enhanced walking group (intervention) had fewer steps at baseline and less of a reduction in steps by 12 weeks as compared with the walking only (control) condition. Mean social engagement scores were significantly higher at 12 weeks (p = .03) for the intervention group. A culturally tailored walking intervention was feasible and acceptable for older Chinese Americans, improving social engagement and PA scores.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Correction to: The Role of Human Computer Interaction in Consumer Health Applications: Current State, Challenges and the Future

  Health informatics · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sensitivity of dual-task motor performance to varying levels of cognitive impairment: a systematic review and quality assessment

  medRxiv · 2023-09-21 · 1 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Summary/Abstract Dementia is one of the key public challenges of this century, with the number of persons with dementia worldwide projected to reach 115 million by 2050. This review aimed to answer whether monitoring of motor performance alone and during a cognitively taxing task (dual-task) is sufficiently sensitive to distinguish between levels of cognitive function (normal function, mild cognitive impairment, dementia) and, thus, appropriate for dementia screening. In the reviewed 15 studies, cognitively healthy controls had a higher dual-task gait speed than persons with impaired cognition (9/12 studies). The difference between dual- and single-task gait speeds (dual-task cost) was lower in healthy controls (7/8 studies). Such differences were not detected between patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. These results suggest that monitoring of dual-task performance may be used in early dementia screening. Diversity in research designs, lack of established statistical and reporting standards prevent meta-analysis of data.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• "Mango Mango, How to Let The Lettuce Dry Without A Spinner?": Exploring User Perceptions of Using An LLM-Based Conversational Assistant Toward Cooking Partner

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023-10-09 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access

  The rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has created numerous potentials for integration with conversational assistants (CAs) assisting people in their daily tasks, particularly due to their extensive flexibility. However, users' real-world experiences interacting with these assistants remain unexplored. In this research, we chose cooking, a complex daily task, as a scenario to explore people's successful and unsatisfactory experiences while receiving assistance from an LLM-based CA, Mango Mango. We discovered that participants value the system's ability to offer customized instructions based on context, provide extensive information beyond the recipe, and assist them in dynamic task planning. However, users expect the system to be more adaptive to oral conversation and provide more suggestive responses to keep them actively involved. Recognizing that users began treating our LLM-CA as a personal assistant or even a partner rather than just a recipe-reading tool, we propose five design considerations for future development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Real-time Public Speaking Anxiety Prediction Model for Oral Presentations

  INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERACTION · 2022-11-04 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Oral presentation skills are essential for most people’s academic and career development. However, due to public speaking anxiety, many people find oral presentations challenging and often avoid them to the detriment of their careers. Public speaking anxiety interventions that help presenters manage their anxiety as it occurs during a presentation can help many presenters. In this paper, we present a model for assessing public speaking anxiety during a presentation—a first step towards developing real-time anxiety interventions. We present our method for ground truth data collection and the results of neural network models for real-time anxiety detection using audio data. Our results show that using an LSTM model we can predict moments of speaking anxiety during a presentation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Early Detection of Cognitive Decline Via Mobile and Home Sensors

  Cognitive informatics in biomedicine and healthcare · 2022-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Investigating a classical neuropsychological test in a real world context

  2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine &amp; Biology Society (EMBC) · 2021-11-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  This study was performed to investigate the validity of a real world version of the Trail Making Test (TMT) across age strata, compared to the current standard TMT which is delivered using a pen-paper protocol. We developed a real world version of the TMT, the Can-TMT, that involves the retrieval of food cans, with numeric or alphanumerical labels, from a shelf in ascending order. Eye tracking data was acquired during the Can-TMT to calculate task completion time and compared to that of the Paper-TMT. Results indicated a strong significant correlation between the real world and paper tasks for both TMTA and TMTB versions of the tasks, indicative of the validity of the real world task. Moreover, the two age groups exhibited significant differences on the TMTA and TMTB versions of both task modalities (paper and can), further supporting the validity of the real world task. This work will have a significant impact on our ability to infer skill or impairment with visual search, spatial reasoning, working memory, and motor proficiency during complex real-world tasks. Thus, we hope to fill a critical need for an exam with the resolution capable of determining deficits which subjective or reductionist assessments may otherwise miss.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• SHB: Large: Collaborative Research: Integrated Communications and Inference Systems for Continuous Coordinated Care of Older Adults in the Home

  NSF · $582k · 2013–2015

• NIH Grant R41MH057175

  NIH · $100k · 1997

• NIH Grant RC1AG036121

  NIH · $950k · 2011

• SHB: Large: Collaborative Research: Integrated Communications and Inference Systems for Continuous Coordinated Care of Older Adults in the Home

  NSF · $1.3M · 2011–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Misha Pavel

  Northeastern University

  69 shared

• Richard M. Frankel

  Regenstrief Institute

  27 shared

• Nan Robertson

  26 shared

• Vicki Fung

  Harvard University

  25 shared

• John Hsu

  Harvard University

  25 shared

• Jie Huang

  Michigan State University

  25 shared

• William Hersh

  Oregon Health & Science University

  25 shared

• Susan L. Norris

  24 shared

Awards & honors

• $300K NSF grant to create a “Self-powered Smart Ring for Alw…