Mario O. Parra, PhD Student

About Me

I am currently a 4th-year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at CICESE, Mexico, where my research journey delves into the intersection of food experiences, mindfulness, and cutting-edge interactive technologies. With a passion for enhancing the quality of life through technology, my work primarily revolves around exploring how conversational agents and large language models can transform our interactions with food, turning everyday eating and cooking into more mindful and enriching experiences. I work under the supervision of Dr. Jesus Favela and Dr. Luis A. Castro.

Education

Publications

• Parra, M. O., Castro, L. A., & Favela, J. (2023, October). Enhancing Well-being Through Food: A Conversational Agent for Mindful Eating and Cooking. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2023 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing & the 2023 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing (pp. 423-427).
• Parra, M. O., Favela, J., & Castro, L. A. (2022, November). Design and Evaluation of a Smart Environment with a Conversational Agent for Mindful Eating. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2022) (pp. 913-924). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
• Parra, M. O., Castro, L. A., & Favela, J. (2021). Understanding changes in behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Opportunities to design around new eating experiences. Avances en Interacción Humano-Computadora, (1), 11-17.
• Parra, M. O., Castro, L. A., & Favela, J. (2021). Interactive technologies to improve eating experiences in young professionals. Avances en Interacción Humano-Computadora, (1), 98-101.
• Parra, M. O., Favela, J., Castro, L. A., & Morales, A. (2018). Monitoring eating behaviors for a nutritionist E-assistant using crowdsourcing. Computer, 51(3), 43-51.

Technical Skills