Graduate Seminar, Ege Ötenen (Indiana University Bloomington)

Bio: Ege Otenen is a dual PhD candidate in Cognitive Science and Informatics (Human–Computer Interaction & Design) at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research investigates how the presence of real and imagined audiences (from intimate others to social media followers and conversational AI agents) transforms the way people construct, narrate, and make sense of their autobiographical memories. Combining controlled experiments, in-depth qualitative interviews, and computational language analysis, she reveals how social and technological contexts reshape memories and emotions. Currently, Ege examines the emerging role of generative AI systems as “memory partners,” investigating how interactions with chatbots and generative models influence how people remember their past experiences and how they feel about them. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals as Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE, Current Psychology, and peer-reviewed conferences including CHI, Cognitive Science Society, and Human–Agent Interaction. She is a CHI Student Research Competition award winner and former visiting fellow at Princeton University.