What can begin with a cold email to a lab? For Supriya Khadka, that email led to a full paper on empathy at ACM CUI, an Honorable Mention, and the start of her next chapter as a PhD student at George Mason University.
While finishing her master’s thesis, Supriya had just read Klara and the Sun and found herself wondering how empathy is studied in conversational agents. That question led her to Smit Desai’s work, and to a cold email that happened to mention the same book he’d read weeks earlier. What followed was eight months of reading, writing, deleting, and rewriting: the ordinary, occasionally frustrating work of turning an open question into a literature review.
When the paper was accepted at ACM CUI 2026, Supriya expected a typical virtual conference. Instead she found one of the warmest research communities she’d encountered, and, unexpectedly, an Honorable Mention. Looking back, she says it’s hard to believe it all began with a cold email and a shared appreciation for a book.