Aline ROC 

Hi! I'm Aline, an R&D engineer and UX Researcher in Bordeaux, France. I'm a firm believer in the effectiveness of teamwork and the value of mixing qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve meaningful projects. At home, I'm a board game geek, a decent singer, a terrible cook, and I spend my free time acting as PO/UXR/QA to help building useful tools for a video game.

Current position, role & responsabilities

I'm part of the Human-Centered Systems team (SCH) at CATIE, a non-profit technology resource center (CRT). Our mission is to facilitate the transfer of technology and knowledge between the worlds of research and industry. As an R&D engineer at CATIE, my job is to plan, conduct, support and promote research that explores the human-technology relationship. Some examples of our current projects at CATIE include improving education in photonics in the national PHOENIX project, or understanding trust in human-AI collaboration for the european PEER project.

Research interests

I specialize in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), as well as applied cognitive science, human factors, user experience research (UXR), and research operations (ReOps). Whenever possible, I seek an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach that borrows from the fields of computer science, ergonomics, psychology, usability engineering and design.

Over the past years, my work has focused on building and measuring usability, accessibility, explainability, trustworthiness, trust, acceptability or performance in: 

• Human learning (cognitive load, adaptive learning, e-learning platforms, gamification for learning, VR simulations)

• Brain-Computer Interfaces (electroencephalography-based interactions, mental tasks, motor imagery, neurofeedback)

• Human-AI collaboration (route planning, assisted decision-making, intelligent tutoring systems)

Experience

Here is a summary of my professional experience:

• Human Factors engineer at CATIE (since march, 2024) — designing user studies and bridging the gap between academia, industry stakeholders, policymakers, educators, and end-users to foster real-world impact of R&D activities.

• UX Researcher at EDF (6 months, 2023) — led large-scale surveys to study the UX of employees' internal industry tools for the workforce of the French electricity producer.

• UX Researcher at DECATHLON (4 months, 2023) — coordinated with product teams to understand and improve the user experience of the e-commerce checkout journeys (web and mobile) at the world's largest sporting goods retailer.

• PhD Student at INRIA (3.5 years, 2019-2022) — worked in the team of Fabien LOTTE on the standardization, evaluation and design of learning experiences for a unique interactive technology: brain-computer interfaces (BCI).

• UX Researcher at MOBALIB (8 months, 2018-2019) — conducted field research that led to the MVP of a B2C mobile app dedicated to pedestrian routes for users with disabilities at a startup promoting the dissemination of accessibility data.

As part of my engineering program, I also completed three internships:

• Assistant researcher at INRIA (6 months, 2018) — studied the influence of psychosocial factors in experimental settings, especially experiementer-related biases, raising awareness among the computer scientists/neuroscientists in the BCI research community. Supervised by Lea Pillette.

• Designer/developper at AT INTERNET (4 months, 2017) — designed and developed from scratch a web application for database monitoring (Angular; C#/.Net; SQL, MongoDB; Jenkins) at the european leader in web analytics services.

• Assistant engineer at MARCIREAU (1 month, 2016) — facilitated qualitative workshops (interviews, focus group, card sorting session), and conducted functional/QA tests, data processing and web programming for a local company specializing in professional IT.

Education

Here is a summary of my education and degrees:

• MCF Qualification (section 27), obtained in 2023

• Ph.D in computer science from the University of Bordeaux, prepared in the Potioc team with Inria and LaBRI (Univ Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, CNRS), under the (super) supervision of Fabien LOTTE, graduated in 2022.

• Engineeing degree (MSc) in Cognitive Science engineering from BORDEAUX INP ENSC, graduated in 2018.

• Preparatory school in maths, physics, computer science (MPSI/MP) at Lycée Camille Guérin (Poitiers), in 2013-2015.

Teaching

I have taught over 140+ hours of classes at the BORDEAUX INP ENSC engineering school, participating in setting up projects, exams and assessment for groups of ~20 students ranging from 1st year (bachelor) to 3rd year (masters).

• Human factors methodologies: 

- Experimental methods and evaluation of technologies (2019-2020, 2023-2024)

- Semantic web and thematic analysis (2020-2021).

• Computer science:

- C# programming and algorithmics (2020-2021)

- Web and database programming (2019-2020)

- Individual CS projects (2019-2020, 2020-2021).

Supervising & Mentoring

I've been a supervisor/mentor for internships of masters' students (M2) from different fields: Cognitive Psychology (L. Kolodzienski, 7 months in 2020) ; Neuroscience & Biotechnologies (S. Pramij, 6 months in 2021) ; Biomedical engineering (M.S. Yamamoto, 1 month in 2021) ; and N. Abo Alzahab, 3 months in 2021) ; and Cognitive Science (J. Azzouguen, 6 months in 2022).

Scientific outreach and research evangelization

I really enjoy supporting scientific transfer and popularizing science. 

• Event manager co-organising the "Star Tech" nights of Pint Of Science in Bordeaux (2024). 

• Speaker in workshops for the Cap Science outreach center (2022) and for MIMM women science students (2022). 

• Co-organiser and speaker for the 4th OpenViBE Workshop held at the 3rd Neuroergonomics Conference (2021).

• Speaker in a video portrait for the Coulisses des sciences event of the IMST master's program (2021). 

• Lead author for the writing of "Apprendre à contrôler une interface cerveau-ordinateur" for Annales des Mines (2020). 

• Contributor in prototyping ARangement, an augmented reality (AR) app designed to assist in the setup and display of directional/safety markers within public spaces (2020).

Local responsibilities & academic community

I always took an active part in student support, mentoring and community life.

• Coach for young students via the DEMA1N.org mentoring platform (2023-2024). 

• Reviewer for academic publications (Frontiers, IJHCS, etc.).

• Student representative elected to the Board of the EDMI doctoral school for two years (2020-2022).

• Member of the psycho-social risks working group (RPS) of the LaBRI laboratory (2022). 

• Secretary of the association of computer science PhD students, the AFoDIB (2019-2021), then active member (2022) and recently appointed honorary member ♥ (2024).

• Communication manager of the ENSC art association BDA (2015-2016). 

Presentations in conferences

• Oral sessions as 1st author: 

8th BCI meeting (2021a), CORTICO (2022, 2020), EPIQUE (2019).

• Poster sessions as 1st author: 

10th BCI meeting (2023a), CORTICO (2019, 2018), 8th Graz Conf (2019a).

• Other contributions (not 1st author): 

9th Graz Conf (2024), CORTICO (2024, 2021a, 2021b), 10th BCI meeting (2023b, 2023c), 8th BCI meeting (2021b), IEEE ICASSP (2020), CHIST-ERA (2020), 8th Graz Conf (2019b).

Selected publications 

Below is a list of selected academic publications.

• 2024 (2*) Brain-Computer Interfaces 一  Large scale investigation of the effect of gender on mu rhythm suppression in motor imagery BCI.

• 2023 (18*) Nature Sci. Data 一  A large EEG database with users’ profile information for motor imagery BCI research.

• 2022 (13*) Brain-Computer Interfaces 一 When should MI-BCI feature optimization include prior knowledge, and which one?

• 2021 (109*) J. of Neural Engineering 一 A review of user training methods in BCI based on mental tasks.

• 2021 (42*) Int. J. of Human-Comp. Studies 一 Experimenters' influence on mental-imagery based BCI user training.

• 2021 (48*) Front. in Human Neurosc. 一 Long-term BCI training of a tetraplegic user: adaptive riemannian classifiers and user training.

• 2021 (7*) IEEE ICASSP 一 Channel selection over Riemannian manifold with non-stationarity consideration for BCI applications.

• 2021 (7*) CHIST-ERA 一 A user-centred approach to unlock the potential of non-invasive BCIs.

* 📊 Number of citations indicated in parenthesis (source: Google Scholar visited on February 4, 2025)