Prof. Dr. Tony Belpaeme

Tony Belpaeme is Professor at Ghent University and Visiting Professor of Cognitive Systems and Robotics at Plymouth University. He is a member of IDLab – imec at Ghent and is associated with the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at Plymouth. His research interests include social systems, cognitive robotics, and artificial intelligence in general. Until April 2005 he was a postdoctoral fellow of the Flemish fund for scientific research (FWO Vlaanderen) in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He held a guest professorship at the same university, where he taught introductory artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Starting from the premise that intelligence is rooted in social interaction, Tony and team try to further the science and technology behind artificial intelligence and social robots. This results in a spectrum of results, from theoretical insights to practical applications. The theoretical insights, in which he argues that interaction is central to natural and artificial cognition and that robots and machines should be sensitive to language and paralinguistic social mechanisms used by people, has drawn considerable academic attention. He complements his work by applying these insights in the design and implementation of robots and robotic applications. His research is regularly used as a showcase of funding success by funding agencies, most recently the Research Councils UK, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the European Commission. The combination of both theoretical cognitive systems research applied to topics with societal relevance has gained him an international reputation. His research has been exhibited at the Natural History Museum London, the Wellcome Trust, the London Science Museum, and the National Space Centre. He has featured in IEEE Spectrum, the Communications of the ACM, and Scientific American. In 2012 his work was named as one of “ten life-changing ideas under research at UK universities” by Research Councils UK, and in 2014 his work was lauded as one of “20 new ideas from the UK that will change the world“.

• Research Area: HRI, Cognitive systems, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Cognitive Science
• Institute: Ghent University, imec

Furhat Robotics

Website

Furhat Robotics is a Conversational AI and Social Robotics company that is building the world's first social robotics and conversational system platform. Furhat's mission is to enable a revolution in human-computer interaction through social and conversational robotics.

• Research Area: N/A
• Institute: N/A

Dr. An Jacobs

An Jacobs, Ph.D., is a sociologist working at SMIT since 2005.Currently she is a part time Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies, teaching Interpretative research methods at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium. She is also Principal Investigator at the research centre SMIT (Studies on Media, Innovation and Technology). In this position, she is Program manager of the Data and Society program, and an interim unit leader of the research unit “ Digital Health and Work” in close cooperation with imec (Belgian/Flemish R&D and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technology). Her scientific research focuses on the people centred development of digital applications in the health and work context (coördination, communication, monitoring, experience). Participation and empowerment are central concepts in the applied mixed methods. She built her expertise in the application domain of health over the years in many different local and European collaboration projects: self-management at home, collaboration of different health care stakeholders (GP’s, pharmacists, …), use of digital tools in hospitals ( for example the OR), nursing homes, home care. As founding partner of the research centre BruBotics (VUB), her team studied human robot interaction in a diverse set of context in health care and manufacturing. People centred and transparent design of algorithms helping to automate new smart solutions with or without robots is another research interest of the team, in close collaboration with the other researchers within SMIT studying privacy literacy ethics and trust.

• Research Area: Sociology, Digital technology, HRI, Human centred design, Health care
• Institute: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, imec

Dr. Katie Winkle

I completed my PhD on socially assistive robotics as part of the ECHOS group at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, where I also worked as a Research Assistant on the RoboTIPS project. My thesis was titled "Expert-Informed Design and Automation of Socially Assistive Robots. After completing a Digital Futures Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm I am now an Assistant Professor (Biträdande Universitetslektor) at Uppsala University, associated with the Uppsala Social Robotics Lab .

• Research Area: HRI, Social robotics, Socially assistive robots
• Institute: Uppsala University

Prof. Dr. Arvid Kappas

At the heart of the science of emotion is empirical research. Theory building and empirical investigations are mutually dependent - one cannot progress without the other. As I have mentioned elsewhere, emotion research can take many forms. My own research focuses on (1) the information processing that causes the (2) subjective changes, (3) physiological reactions, and (4) expressive behaviors that we associate with emotion. However, each of these response domains presentes complexities in their own right. For example, facial expressions are not only determined by emotions, but also by social and cultural processes. Hence, it is necessary to go beyond emotional processes in the case of each of these domains - in this example questions can be as simple as what happens to facial expressions when others are present. What if they are friends, or what if they are strangers. Knowing more about this will help to understand how behaviors change when we are emotional. If we do not know enough about the general case, we will not know whether emotional facial expressions in social context are a special case, due to the emotion, or follow other expressions, even some that we might not consider emotional.

• Research Area: Emotions, Emotion expression, Affective computing
• Institute: Constructor University

Nikhil Churamani

I am a PhD student at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, working under the supervision of Dr Hatice Gunes in the Affective Intelligence and Robotics lab. My current research focusses on Lifelong or Continual Learning of Affect in Social robots, aimed towards enabling lifelong human-robot relationships and is funded by the EPSRC International Doctoral Scholarship and the Premium Research Studentship of the department. My other research interests include Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Neuro-inspired AI, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). I served as the Computing Officer for Trinity Hall MCR from 2018-2020. I also served as the PhD student representative on the Faculty Board of the Computer Laboratory from 2019-2020 as well as the representative for the Rainbow group at the Graduate Students Forum from 2018-2020.

• Research Area: Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Neuro-inspired AI, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
• Institute: University of Cambridge

Dr. Katleen Gabriels

Dr. Katleen Gabriels is a moral philosopher, specialised in computer and machine ethics. She is an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University (FASoS, Department of Philosophy). She researches the co-shaping of morality and computer technologies. Katleen is the programme director of the interdisciplinary BA Digital Society. She holds an MSc in Germanic Philology from KU Leuven and an MSc in Moral Sciences from Ghent University and a doctoral degree (2014) in Philosophy and Moral Sciences from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher from 2014 to 2017 and as professor ad interim (2016-2017). She was also a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna (2016). In addition, she also studied one full academic year (2007-2008) at Helsinki University (Erasmus programme). From April 2017 to December 2018 Katleen was an Assistant Professor in the research group Philosophy and Ethics at the Department Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). The Willy Calewaert-Chair 2018-2019 (demens.nu) was awarded to her by the faculty Engineering Sciences of the VUB. She is an executive board member of INSEIT (https://inseit.net/), the chair of ETHICOMP, an international organisation that occupies itself with ethical computing, and an affiliate member of 4TU Centre for Ethics and Technology. She is the author of Conscientious AI. Machines Learning Morals (VUBPRESS, 2020), the revised and English version of Regels voor robots. Ethiek in tijden van AI (2019, VUBPRESS). Regels voor robots was nominated for the shortlist of the Hypatia prize, biennial prize for the best philosophy book written by a Dutch-speaking, female philosopher and for the longlist of the Socrates Wisselbeker, the prize for the best philosophy book of The Netherlands and Flanders. Her first book Onlife. Hoe de digitale wereld je leven bepaalt (How digitalisation shapes your life) was published in 2016 (Lannoo) and won the Liberales Book of the Year 2016-award. In September 2021, she was awarded the Edmond Hustinx Prize for Science. She has been a member of the Maastricht Young Academy since 2022.

• Research Area: Philosophy and ethics of technology, computer ethics, media ethics, moral philosophy, Internet of Things (IoT), (social) virtual worlds, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Institute: Maastricht University

Dr. Ruud Hortensius

• Institute: Utrecht University

Multiple Speakers on Experimental Design

More details coming soon!

• Research Area: -
• Institute: -

Prof. Dr. Oliver Lemon

Oliver Lemon is a Professor of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and Director of the Interaction Lab, which focuses on conversational AI, NLP, machine learning approaches to spoken and multimodal interaction, and Human-Robot Interaction. He was previously a research fellow at Stanford and Edinburgh universities, and holds a PhD from Edinburgh (1996). He has led several national and international research projects funded by EPSRC and the European Union. He is an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, and a standing reviewer for TACL and the ACL Rolling Review (ARR). He was a faculty advisor of Heriot-Watt's Alexa-prize team, which was a finalist in both 2017 and 2018. . He is the Chief AI Officer of the Conversational AI spin-out company Alana AI. He works on machine learning methods for intelligent and adaptive multimodal interfaces, including Speech Recognition, Spoken Language Understanding, Natural Language Generation, and Human-Robot Interaction. He has also applied this work in Technology Enhanced Learning using Virtual Characters. See publications (bibtex here). He is a standing reviewer for TACL and the ACL Rolling Review (ARR), an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, and previously of ACM Transactions on Speech and Language Processing, and on the editorial board of Dialogue and Discourse.

• Research Area: Conversational AI, Spoken Language Understanding, Spoken Dialog Systems, Human-Robot Interaction
• Institute: Heriot-Watt University

Multiple Speakers : NLP experts from UGent

More details coming soon!

• Research Area: NLP
• Institute: Ghent University

Thomas Winters

https://thomaswinters.be/

• Research Area: computational creativity, creative AI, computational humor, probabilistic models
• Institute: KU Leuven

Prof. Dr. Maaike Bleeker

Prof. Dr. Maaike Bleeker with support from Irene Alcubilla Troughton, Dr. Kim Baraka

• Research Area: -
• Institute: Utrecht University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Dr. Maartje De Graaf

I am an Assistant Professor at the department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. I am Communication Scientist in the multidisciplinary field of human-robot interaction. At the core, my research approaches communication from the sociopsychological tradition. This means I theorize communication as “a process of expression, interaction, and influence; a process in which the behavior of humans or other complex organisms expresses psychological mechanisms, states, and traits and, through interaction with the similar expressions of other individuals, produces a range of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects.” (Craig, 1999, p.143). However, I do acknowledge that objects may have social meanings in our everyday life and that the human psychology is shaped by the social context. Therefore, my research also takes notion of the phenomenological (that challenges the subject-object dichotomy within the sociopsychological tradition) and sociocultural (underlining that sociopsychological ‘laws’ are culture bound and biased by individualism) tradition. My research is motivated by my intrinsic drive to understand human behavior and its underlying psychological and cognitive processes. My past research indicates a strong impact of people’s anthropomorphic evaluations of robots in the emergence of long-term acceptance. Envisioning a future in which the social abilities of robots can only increase, my research interest focuses on people’s social, emotional and cognitive responses to robots including the societal and ethical consequences of those responses. The end goal is to influence technology design and policy direction to pursue the development of socially acceptable robots that benefit society. Before starting at Utrecht University, I was a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Department of Communication Science at University of Twente and later Brown University’s Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative. I have a Bachelor of Business Administration in Communication Management (2005), a Master of Science in Media Communication (2011), and a PhD in Communication Science and Human-Robot Interaction (2015).

• Research Area: Human-Robot Interaction, Communication Science, Cyber-psychology, Ethics of Technology
• Institute: Utrecht University

Dr. Zerrin Yumak

Dr. Zerrin Yumak is an assistant professor of computer science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She has 15 years of experience in the area of believable virtual humans and social robots. She works on computational models of social and emotional behaviors and evaluation of them, in particular non-verbal behavior synthesis, multi-party interaction and emotion and memory modelling. She obtained her PhD from University of Geneva, Switzerland. She did her post-doc at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She has been the Associate Editor of Visual Computer and Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds journals and she is the program committee member of several conferences such as SCA (Symposium on Computer Animation), SIGGRAPH Asia, IEEE AIVR and AAMAS (International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems). She was the program chair of Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2019) conference. She co-organized the IEEE MARCH (Modeling and Animating Realistic Crowds and Humans) and GENEA (Generation and Evaluation of Non-verbal Behaviour for Embodied Agents) workshops. She is the director of the Motion Capture and Virtual Reality Lab at Utrecht University and co-organizer of the Embodied AI initiative at Utrecht University.

• Research Area: Embodied AI, Interactive Virtual Humans and Social Robots, Non-verbal Behavior Synthesis, Motion Capture and Animation
• Institute: Utrecht University