STAFF PROFILE
Dr Rohit Ashok Khot
Dr. Rohit Ashok Khot is a Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Rohit Ashok Khot is the Director of the HAFP Research Lab and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Design, working with the Design and Creative Practice ECP at RMIT University, Australia. Rohit is also the recipient of ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellowship (DECRA) (2019-2022).
Working at the intersection of screen technology and eating practices, his work challenges health stereotypes around mindfulness and wellbeing through the creative convergence of design and technology. Together with his HAFP team wants to change the way we think about the relationship between food and technology—beyond Instagram pics and tech-based media that features food. As he relates, “it’s an often-misunderstood relationship,” but his research aims to make this uneasy relationship palatable for us by changing our perception around how dining and technology can correlate.
Dr. Khot’s research career has been on an upward trajectory ever since he started my Ph.D. in 2012. Within a short span, he has established himself as a leading researcher of international repute in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that is evident through his appointment for the most competitive “Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship”; recipient of the prestigious “Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA)” worth $398,000 (amongst the only four awarded under FOR 0806 and amongst the only three awarded under the FOR 1203 out of the 200 awarded DECRAs); over 50 scholarly refereed articles in high-ranking international conferences (Citations: 1016, h-index:18) and journals including scholarly books on the topics of “Human-Food Interaction” and “Exertion Games”; national and international collaborations; professional service to HCI community through chairing and program committee roles; and leadership at the Exertion Games Lab as Deputy Director (2015-2019) and the HAFP Research Lab as founder and director.
Dr. Khot’s work has been recognized as being aligned with RMIT values (evidenced through multiple RMIT awards including 2020 RMIT Prize for Research Excellence – ECR in Design & 2017 RMIT Prize for Research Excellence – HDR in Technology), creatively exploring the social impacts of the convergence of design and technology and advancing research in the emergent field of Human-Food Interaction. His works explore some of the biggest contemporary wellbeing challenges, offering evidence-based insights into ways that we can manage our health and eating practices within the realities of screen-based cultures. These are issues of global significance particularly in today’s changing climate and work-from-home necessities. He brings inventive and unconventional design thinking to data-driven wellbeing methods and provokes new ideas and inspirations for technology-mediated food futures. The potential benefits of such work are far-reaching and foundational, facilitating outcomes and impacts in both public and industrial areas and could enable the development of strategic research alliances capable of setting and driving new research agendas at the convergence between design, technology, and food.
Rohit also maintains a strong collegial relationship with the international HCI community and my RMIT colleagues from different schools and has contributed to several research-related initiatives. He situates his work primarily in the key Enabling Capability Platform (ECP) on Design and creative practice and contributed to its vision of “Designing the world of tomorrow”. Besides, my work also bridges three other ECPs, namely, Information Systems and Engineering, Biomedical and health innovation, and Urban futures.
Capabilities and Research interests
Human Food Interactions (HFI), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Playful Interaction Design, Quantified self (Personal Informatics), Food printing, Tangible and Embodied Interactions, Physical visualizations, 3D printing, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Research through Design, Sports and Spectator interfaces.
Professional memberships
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM),
- Special Interest group on Human Computer Interaction (SIGCHI),
- Data Physicalisation community
Program committee member
ACM DIS 2017, ACM TEI 2017, ACM DIS 2016, ACM TEI 2016, ACM TEI 2015, ACM CHI WiP 2014, ACM CHI WiP 2015, ACM OzCHI 2013, ACM IE 2013.
Co-organizer
FoodCHI 2017, SIG meeting on 'future of food' at CHI 2017, Self-experimentation workshop at ACM CHI 2017, Summer school on Playful Interactions 2017, Game Jam workshop at ACM CHI 2013, SIG meeting at ACM CHI 2013, ACM CHI 2014, ACM CHI 2015.
PhD – Media and Communication 2016, RMIT University, Australia
Thesis: Understanding Material Representations of Physical Activity
Advisor: Professor Florian Mueller, Prof. Larissa Hjorth
Master of Science – by Research in Computer Science 2010, IIIT Hyderabad, India
Thesis: Human Computation with Perceptive Intelligence
Advisor: Associate Professor Kannan Srinathan
Internship
- IBM Research, Australia 2015
Guest speaker
- Newcastle Innovation Festival 2017
- 3D Food Printing Conference 2017
- UX Australia 2016 – Hosted by UX Australia
- STEADx 2015 – Hosted by Queensland Spatial Survey Association (QSSA)
- IIIT Hyderabad 2016 – Hosted by Associate Professor Venkatesh Choppella
- University of Melbourne 2015 – Hosted by Behnaz Rostami Yeganeh
- Mixed Reality lab, University of Nottingham 2013 – Hosted by Dr Joseph Marshall
- Khot, R.,Ng, J.,Aggarwal, D. (2022). Crafting Tangible Interfaces for Human Digestion: Unpacking the Research through Design Prototyping Journey In: Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI 2022), Daejon, Republic of Korea, 13-16 February 2022
- Khot, R.,Yi, J.,Aggarwal, D. (2022). Designing for Microbreaks: Unpacking the Design Journey of Zenscape In: Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI 2022), Daejon, Republic of Korea, 13-16 February 2022
- Ozkaynak, M.,Novak, L.,Choi, Y.,Khot, R. (2021). Emerging Methods for Patient Ergonomics In: The Patient Factor, CRC Press, Boca Raton
- Mueller, F.,Khot, R.,Dwyer, T.,Goodwin, S., et al, . (2021). Data as Delight: Eating data In: 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Online Virtual Conference (originally Yokohama, Japan), May 8-13, 2021
- Khot, R.,Aggarwal, D.,Yi, J.,Prohasky, D. (2021). Guardian of the Snacks: Toward designing a companion for mindful snacking In: Multimodality & Society, 1, 153 - 173
- Pasumarthy, S.,Tai, E.,Khot, R.,Danaher, J. (2021). Gooey Gut Trail : Demystifying Human Gut Health Through a Board Game In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Creativity and Cognition (C&C '21), Virtual event, Italy, 22-23 June 2021
- Sandbhor, P.,Bangal, P.,Aggarwal, D.,Khot, R. (2021). Life on Wings: Relating to a Bird's Life in a City through a Board Game In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5, 1 - 28
- Tai, E.,Aggarwal, D.,Khot, R. (2020). Reconnecting with Food through Dining Play In: CHI PLAY 2020 - Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, Canada, 2-4 November 2020
- Ren, X.,An, P.,Bekker, T.,Chen, Y.,Khot, R.,Bhomer, M.,Wang, Y.,Spina, G. (2020). Weaving healthy behaviors into new technology routines: Designing in (and for) the COVID-19 work-from-home period In: Proceedings of the Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2020), Eindhoven, Netherlands, 6-10 July 2020
- Wang, Y.,Khot, R.,Zhang, X.,Mueller, F.,Li, Z. (2020). Towards a framework for designing playful gustosonic experiences In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020), Honolulu, United States, 25-30 April 2020
2 PhD Current Supervisions
- Designing augmented eating interfaces to promote mindful eating. Funded by: ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) 2019 from (2019 to 2022)
- Summer School on Experimental Play. Funded by: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction from (2018 to 2018)
- SIGCHI Sponsored Summer School on Playful Interactions. Funded by: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction 2017 from (2017 to 2017)