Cassell's early work involved verbal and nonverbal aspects of human communication, into which she began introducing computational systems in order to deconstruct the linguistic and nonverbal communication to allow machines to interact with humans.
Randal Bryant, Dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, commented on her appointment to the directorship of the Human Computer Interaction Institute that she would "expand the horizons of the institute." Cassell is credited with developing the Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA), the first conversational agent with a body: an animated human figure that integrates gesture, facial expression and intonation to interact with people. Subsequently, she developed a "virtual child," that has helped children with autism develop advanced social skills in ways that in some respects surpassed those taught by association with real children or teachers. In other work, Cassell directed the first international online community for young people in 1998. Called the Junior Summit, it gathered more than 3000 young people aged 10 to 16, from 139 different countries. Cassell has opined that "The Internet is not diminishing community activity, but simply transferring it to online communities. Young people who use them are getting just as much practice in leadership and social skills and community involvement as they did before the Internet." Cassell has commented frequently in media on topics related to children and technology. In parallel, Cassell has carried out research on girls and women in technology. She designed a web-based storytelling system called "Renga, the Cyberstory" to help draw girls into new technology. During 1994-1995 she designed and coordinated workshops on survival skills for women in academia at the
University of Pennsylvania and the
Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute in Linguistics. She also has worked on research into what constitutes a "normal" career path in linguistics for women. Commenting on why women were not more involved in computing careers, Cassell has commented that the creation of girls' games had not eliminated "the sense among both boys and girls that computers were 'boys' toys' and that true girls didn't play with computers." Additionally, she has written that women do not want to be identified as a "nerd" or "geek." Cassell contributed to a 2011 New York Times debate on "Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?" writing: "...Wikipedia may feel like a fight to get one's voice heard. One gets a sense of this insider view from looking at the 'talk page' of many articles, which rather than seeming like collaborations around the construction of knowledge, are full of descriptions of 'edit-warring' — where successive editors try to cancel each other's contributions out — and bitter, contentious arguments about the accuracy of conflicting points of view...However, it is still the case in American society that debate, contention, and vigorous defense of one's position is often still seen as a male stance, and women's use of these speech styles can call forth negative evaluations." More recently, Cassell has built "socially-aware" conversational agents, capable of recognizing and engaging in rapport-building behaviors with people. In 2017 her team was invited to build an example of this work, the Socially Aware Robot Assistant (SARA) for World Economic Forum attendees to interact – the first live demonstration of AI technology in the Davos Congress Center. As of January 2024, Cassell has been invited to speak about Artificial Intelligence at the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos 9 times. In 2011 she was named to the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Robotics and Smart Devices, which she then chaired. She currently serves as a member of their expert forum. In 2025, she was named a Fellow of the International Academy of Artificial Intelligence Sciences (AAIS). ==Bibliography==