About

Dr. Kyla McMullen is an Associate Professor in the Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering Department at the University of Florida. She is notably the first and currently the only African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. McMullen completed her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar, and earned her Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. During her Ph.D. studies, she also served as a faculty member at Wayne State University, teaching computer literacy courses to over 2,000 students. Dr. McMullen is deeply committed to encouraging women and minorities to pursue careers in computing and STEM fields, authoring works such as "Beautiful, Black, and Brainy" and "Brilliant is the New Black," which highlight exceptional young African Americans excelling in STEM and challenge typical stereotypes of scientists. Her research focuses on the perception, applications, and development of 3D audio technologies, which digitally filter sounds to create the perception of spatial audio over headphones, akin to surround sound. This research aims to create realistic virtual environments, enhance data sonification, augment assistive technologies for persons with visual impairments, and reduce cognitive load in multimodal systems. Dr. McMullen has received the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award to support her research in this area and is the principal investigator of an NSF S-STEM award designed to alleviate financial burdens for graduate students pursuing Ph.D. degrees. She regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on topics including "Computers and Modern Society" and "3D Audio for Virtual Environments." In addition to her research and teaching, Dr. McMullen plays a significant role in broadening participation in computing through her involvement with NSF's Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences (iAAMCS). She has served as conference chair for the National Society of Blacks in Computing, fostering professional development and networking among Black computing students, faculty, and industry professionals. Dr. McMullen also co-hosts the Modern Figures Podcast, a collaboration between iAAMCS and The National Center for Women and Information Technology, which elevates the voices and stories of Black women in computing.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Geology
• Cognitive psychology
• Environmental science
• Psychology
• Human–computer interaction
• Climatology
• Speech recognition
• Data science
• Applied psychology

Selected publications

• Learning Persistence & Resistance from History & SIGCSE Reads

  2026-02-13

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing museum experiences with real-time, immersive 3D audio technology

  Focal Press eBooks · 2026-04-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Integrating immersive, 3D audio technology into museums presents a promising avenue for enhancing visitor engagement and creating a more immersive and inclusive experience. This chapter proposes a context-aware audio guide system that utilizes real-time 3D audio to complement visual exhibits and to provide visitors with personalized and interactive auditory content. The system incorporates an ultrasonic position tracking system for accurate and precise location monitoring of visitors, ensuring seamless audio updates as they move through the museum space. A pilot study conducted at the Panama Canal Society Annual Reunion yielded positive feedback, indicating high satisfaction with the system’s usability and preference over traditional exhibit setups. Technical refinements, including spatial audio rendering algorithms and a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), are suggested to address certain limitations and enhance user experience. Furthermore, the chapter advocates for an open-source approach to the project, making the technology accessible to a broader range of museums and institutions with limited resources. The study concludes that real-time 3D audio systems can potentially transform the museum experience, fostering a deeper appreciation of art, history, and culture for all visitors. Continued research and implementation in diverse museum settings are recommended to validate and expand the benefits of this technology on a larger scale.

  PublisherDOI

• Stronger Together: Community, Coaching, Camaraderie for Black Women and Girls in Computing

  2025-02-18

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Workshop on Building Capacity for a Research Community on Black Women and Girls in Computing

  2024-02-01

  articleSenior author

  Black women and girls remain underrepresented in computing. Initiatives designed to address this lack of representation have been implemented over the last three decades with limited success. Modern Figures Podcast was inspired by the movie ,Hidden Figures- to showcase the expertise, education, and career paths of Black women and girls in tech. Most episodes follow a similar arc, unveiling how each interviewee became interested in pursuing a career in computing in their formative years, ultimately arriving at their current role. Simultaneously, the lack of a collective body of research on Black women in computing was highlighted in a seminal workshop report by the Black Women in Computing community. Often, data focused on gender or race but not the intersection of both. This nuance of the ,double bind,- as described by Shirley Malcom, is found in studies focused on Black women and girls. As a recently funded National Science Foundation Broadening Participation in Computing demonstration project, we aim to leverage this first convening of researchers focused on black issues in computing to catalyze our efforts to build capacity for research collaborations and generate evidence-based strategies to address the lack of scholarship in this space. This engaging creative thinking workshop will involve critical discourse around the lack of research focused on issues faced by Black women and girls in computing. Participants can expect to move around the room, engaging in mind mapping and other facilitated activities using an assets-based systemic inquiry approach to determine how to collectively move this research community forward.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Laboratory Environment Type on Intermittent Sound Localization

  Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting · 2022-09-01

  articleSenior author

  Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are gaining commercial popularity. 3D sound guidelines for AR and VR are derived from psychoacoustic experiments performed in contrived, sterile laboratory settings. Often, these settings are expensive, inaccessible, and unattainable for researchers. The feasibility of conducting psychoacoustic experiments outside the laboratory remains unclear. To investigate, we explore 3D sound localization experiments in-lab (IL) and out-of-the lab (OL). The IL study condition was conducted as a traditional psychoacoustic experiment in a soundproof booth. The OL condition occurred in a quiet environment of the participants' choosing, using commercial-grade headphones. Localization performance did not vary significantly for OL participants compared to the IL participants, with larger variation observed in the IL condition. Participants needed significantly more time to complete the experiment IL than OL. The results suggest that conducting headphone-based psychoacoustic experiments outside the laboratory is feasible if completion time is negligible.

  PublisherDOI

• A machine learning tutorial for spatial auditory display using head-related transfer functions

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2022-02-01 · 4 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding

  This review presents a high-level overview of the uses of machine learning (ML) to address several challenges in spatial auditory display research, primarily using head-related transfer functions. This survey also reviews and compares several categories of ML techniques and their application to virtual auditory reality research. This work addresses the use of ML techniques such as dimensionality reduction, unsupervised learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and deep learning algorithms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the usage of ML algorithms to address specific spatial auditory display research challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• The Corsi Block-Tapping Test: Evaluating methodological practices with an eye towards modern digital frameworks

  Computers in Human Behavior Reports · 2021 · 70 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science

  Spatial memory is the part of memory that allows us to remember where things are in the environment. It is critical to everyday function and interaction. A number of tests have been developed for measuring spatial memory. One of the most commonly used tests is the Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT). The CBT offers researchers a simple way to measure spatial spans. Unfortunately, the CBT has suffered from a lack of methodological consistency over the years. This article conducts a systematic review of CBT literature to evaluate modern methodological practices. Thirty-nine CBT studies, conducted over the last twenty years, are evaluated for how closely they adhere to a standard version of the test. Particular focus is placed on analyzing parameters within the CBT and advancing avenues of future work. The review is intended to highlight the need for a common digital framework that can be used in conducting CBTs and other spatial span tests.

  PublisherDOI

• Complementing National Retention Efforts in Computer Science with Local Support

  2021-05-23

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Within the past 20 years, there have been numerous national interventions for graduate students from underrepresented groups in computer science. Local programs leverage and complement national resources while providing local support within students' home departments. In this cohort-based program, selected scholars receive scholarships. The programming combats five barriers faced by Ph.D. students. This paper argues for a local and national approach that will significantly improve retention over a purely national strategy.

  PublisherDOI

• Prediction of Object Geometry from Acoustic Scattering Using Convolutional Neural Networks

  2021-05-13 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Acoustic scattering is strongly influenced by boundary geometry of objects over which sound scatters. The present work proposes a method to infer object geometry from scattering features by training convolutional neural networks. The training data is generated from a fast numerical solver developed on CUDA. The complete set of simulations is sampled to generate multiple datasets containing different amounts of channels and diverse image resolutions. The robustness of our approach in response to data degradation is evaluated by comparing the performance of networks trained using the datasets with varying levels of data degradation. The present work has found that the predictions made from our models match ground truth with high accuracy. In addition, accuracy does not degrade when fewer data channels or lower resolutions are used.

  PublisherDOI

• DiVRsify: Break the Cycle and Develop VR for Everyone

  IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications · 2021-11-01

  preprintOpen access

  Virtual reality technology is biased. It excludes approximately 95% of the world’s population by being primarily designed for male, western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic populations. This bias may be due to the lack of diversity in virtual reality researchers, research participants, developers, and end users, fueling a noninclusive research, development, and usability cycle. The objective of this article is to highlight the minimal virtual reality research involving understudied populations with respect to dimensions of diversity, such as gender, race, culture, ethnicity, age, disability, and neurodivergence. Specifically, we highlight numerous differences in virtual reality usability between underrepresented groups compared to commonly studied populations. These differences illustrate the lack of generalizability of prior virtual reality research. Lastly, we present a call to action with the aim that, over time, will break the cycle and enable virtual reality for everyone.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Audio RESCUE: Realistic Audio for RESponders in Complex Undetermined Environments

  NSF · $550k · 2019–2026

• CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: 3D Audio Augmentation for Limited Field of View Augmented Reality Systems for Medical Training

  NSF · $360k · 2017–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Gregory H. Wakefield

  11 shared

• Ziqi Fan

  University of Florida

  5 shared

• Colleen M. Lewis

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  5 shared

• Jeremy Waisome

  University of Florida

  4 shared

• Yunhao Wan

  University of Florida

  4 shared

• Terek Arce

  University of Florida

  4 shared

• John Quarles

  3 shared

• Tabitha C. Peck

  University of Florida

  3 shared

Labs

• SoundPAD LabPI

  Research on the Perception and Application Development of Sound in Interfaces

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science and Engineering

  University of Florida

Awards & honors

• NSF Early Career Award (2019)
• Diverse Issues In Higher Education – 2015
• Emerging Scholar Google Inc. – Travel Grant to Attend Grace…
• National Black Data Processing Associates – Professional Ach…
• MUSES and GradSWE – Trailblazer Award for Achievement