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Elsa Harris
Associate Professor, Mathematics
Teaches In
Liberal Arts and Sciences
Education: 

M.S in Statistics, Claremont Graduate University (CGU)
M.S and B.S in Electrical Engineering with focus on Automation from Polytechnic University of Tirana, Albania
B.S in Mathematics Education from University of Elbasan, Albania

Bio/Affiliation: 

Elsa is currently completing her Ph.D. in Engineering and Computational Mathematics – a joint program at the College of Engineering California State University-Long Beach (CSULB) and CGU. Elsa has also taken numerous accounting, economics, and business classes, and completed an MBA graduate certificate from Pepperdine University and a Project Management Professional (PMP) certificate from the Project Management Institute.

Elsa's current research interests include experimental and computational approaches for the study of human movement, sustainable energy choices for on-body electronics, and textile-based intelligent self-powered systems for human health monitoring.

Affiliations: 

Elsa started working at Otis College in 2017 as an associate professor of Mathematics and Science and as the program coordinator of Mathematics and Science courses in the Liberal Arts and Science Department. She has developed the curriculum for new classes such as Infographics, Smart Textile Science, The Mathematics of a Startup, and Money Matters and helped develop the curriculum for the new course in 2022: Introduction to Programming. Her goal has been to offer new courses at Otis that teach quantitative and critical thinking skills in the context of relevant topics such as financial literacy, sustainability, and storytelling with data.

She previously taught Applied Mathematics in the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia and various college-level Mathematics courses at Howard Community College, Maryland. As a graduate student, she has been a coordinator of Gateway to Exploring Mathematics (GEMS) at CGU and a research and teaching assistant at CSULB. She performs research at the Human Performance and Robotics Laboratory (HPRL) at the College of Engineering, CSULB.

Before teaching, Elsa worked as an Engineer and Project Manager, managing projects and performing human-machine interface design and programming for Johnson Controls, Honeywell, and end-users from data centers, universities, hospitals, etc. She has also been the financial controller for multiple small businesses helping them with financial analysis and reporting. She brings this rich and diverse technical and business background to the classes she teaches.

Elsa is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). She volunteers with the local rotary chapter and other non-profit organizations in the greater Los Angeles area.

Publications:  

A Survey of Human Gait-Based Artificial Intelligence Applications
Frontiers in Robotics and AI · Jan 3, 2022
This work reviews all research in the field of human gait analysis using artificial intelligence since 2012. It provides a broad survey of the field's current state and identifies future areas of potential study and growth.