Yotam Sechayk | <strong>Dept. of Creative Informatics</strong><br />The University of Tokyo

About Me

I am a Ph.D. candidate at The University of Tokyo, advised by Prof. Takeo Igarashi, and co-advised by Prof. Ariel Shamir of Reichman University. I master’s degree from The University of Tokyo in Creative Informatics at 2024, and my bachelor’s degree from Tel-Aviv University in 2018, with a double major in Computer Science and Film Studies. I also have several years of experience as a software engineer in the tech industry.

Research Interests

Human-Computer Interaction: creativity support tools, human-in-the-loop machine learning
Accessibility: assistive technology, inclusive design, universal design

News

[May. 2024] Presenting SmartLearn at CHI 2024 LBW Track
[Apr. 2024] Start Ph.D. course at The University of Tokyo
[Mar. 2024] Graduated with Masters in Creative Informatics from The University of Tokyo
[Mar. 2024] Our work SmartLearn: Visual-Temporal Accessibility for Slide-based e-learning Videos was accepted to CHI 2024 Late Breaking Work track.
[Jan. 2024] Our work on collaborative storytelling was accepted to Interaction 2024.

Publications

CHI

Visual-Temporal Accessibility for Slide-based e-learning Videos

Sechayk Yotam, Shamir Ariel, and Igarashi Takeo

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24), 2024.

PDF Video Late breaking work

INTERACTION

MyStoryKnight: A Character-drawing Driven Storytelling System Using LLM Hallucinations

Sechayk Yotam, Penarska Gabriela A., Randsalu Isa A., Arzate Cruz Christian, and Igarashi Takeo

Information Processing Society of Japan Symposium (INTERACTION), 2024.

PDF Code Interactive demo

WISS

Smart Replay: eラーニング動画における視覚的・時間的アクセシビリティの向上

Smart Replay: Improving Visual and Temporal Accessibility in e-Learning Videos

Sechayk Yotam, Shamir Ariel, and Igarashi Takeo

Workshop of Interactive Systems and Software (WISS), 2023.

PDF Video Short presentation

Projects

MyStoryKnight (human-AI storytelling) - Collaborative Storytelling with Tangible Input"

REACT and Flask based web application using the OpenAI LLM-based APIs for human-AI collaborative storytelling with tangible user input in the form of a physical drawing for character generation. Generating an adventure-like story with user choice affecting the story development.

PDF Code Project Page 2023

HealthUp (prevent food waste) - Sustainability Cloud Powered Project

REACT and Django based web application to help prevent food waste and efficiently use food inventory. Manage ingredients and food, find recipes based on inventory list and additional filters, view health attributes of each recipe and handle expired foods correctly.

Project Page 2022

LyricEd (learn English through music) - Educational WebApp Project

A python based web application using various API integrations. The website offers gamification of English learning by giving users tools to complete missing lyrics from a song they choose while listening to that song playing. Users can control level, view scores and track progress.

Project Page 2017

Sunny Day (realtime sun protection) - eHealth Application Project

A Xamarin Forms application integrating the Microsoft Band 2 for sun protection and sun-block reminders. The application's backend was built using Microsoft Azure App Services, including SQL databases and SQLite for cloud sync and Azure Blob services. The project also utilized computer-vision image processing implemented in Python with OpenCV.

Project Page 2016

Internships

Honda Research Inst. (October 2023 - March 2024); Emotion recognition for HRI interaction, using 3DMM data. Working on improvement of existing ML algorithms through specific data augmentation techniques.

Languages

Hebrew	English	Japanese
Native	Fluent	Intermediate