Rising stars in Social Robotics

The panel aims at early career researchers, including early-stage postdoctoral researchers, Ph.D. students and MSc students, conducting research on any aspects of social robotics. The panel presents a constructive environment for several researchers of different levels of seniority, the Rising Stars, to offer their experience, struggles and advices on how to carry out successful research and start a career in HRI. The panel will be structured as a series of short presentations from the invited speakers, followed by discussions, questions and feedback from the audience. Within Rising Stars in Social Robotics panel, a lunch will be organised where researchers will be able to share their questions, concerns, experience and have different difficulties that people may find at different levels of their carriers and find themselves at a crossroads within a more familiar setting.

Invited Speakers:

Gabriella Lakatos

Dr Gabriella Lakatos is a Reader in Social- and Ethorobotics (Associate Professor Research) at the School of Physics, Engineering, and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire (UK), and a member of the Robotics Research Group at the same university. She completed her PhD in the field of Ethology at the Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary, after which she transferred her skills to the field of Etho-robotics and Human-Robot Interactions. Her research interest lies in biologically inspired acceptable and credible robot behaviour design, trust in human-robot interactions, and robot-assisted therapy for vulnerable populations. Her research involving the Kaspar robot has a direct impact on the lives of children with autism and learning disabilities. Her various research projects were funded by Horizon Europe, EPSRC, UKRI: TAS & UK-RAS, the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund, and the Dinwoodie Charitable Company. She currently co-leads the Horizon Europe project SWAG and Dinwoodie-funded Hospital@Home teams at the University of Hertfordshire. Gabriella is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, her teaching focusing on Responsible Technology and Advanced Research Topics. She is an editorial board member of two international journals. She has been co-organiser of several iterations of the Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction (SCRITA) workshop at the RO-MAN conference and a guest editor of special issues on the same topic in two international journals.

Beatrice Wohl

Dr Beatrice Wohl’s research focuses on digital innovation, inclusion and computing education, having specifically studied the delivery of the 2014 English computing curriculum. They have worked in consultancy and communications for over a decade, particularly in the creative and cultural sectors. Their research interests are the intersection of the digital economy, media theory, digital citizenship and digital literacy. As a teaching and supervising master’s student at CCI, Bea provides research support across the Creative Computing Institute, shaping funded research that examines the social impact of technology. Bea was previously the Post-Doctoral Fellow on the Transforming the Gap: Inclusive Digital Arts and Humanities Research Skills (DAReS) CoLab. Their main role is to support the delivery of academic research and outputs across CCI, focusing primarily on UKRI-funded grant-funded projects. They have an Advanced Certificate in PR  and a foundation certificate in PRINCE2 project management.

Praminda Caleb-Solly

Professor Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, University Academic Lead for the National Rehabilitation Centre, and an Honorary Visiting Professor at NUH NHS Trust. Her research focus is assistive robotics and intelligent sensing, with 25+ years’ experience spanning academia and health technology translation, including four years in an assistive-technology SME/charity, Designability. She holds a PhD in Computer Science, an MSc in Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering, and a BEng (Hons) in Electronic Systems Engineering. She leads the CHART research group, delivering interdisciplinary programmes and living-lab testbeds focused on evaluation, safety assurance and adoption of robotics and connected health technologies. Her governance and standards roles include Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Ethics and membership of ISO TC299/WG2 and UK BSI robotics/ethics committees. She led the EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Network+ EMERGENCE which has produced a White Paper on Robotics in Health and Social Care, and co-leads the NIHR RehabHRC Enabling Participation theme. She is also Co-Founder and Director of Robotics for Good CIC, supporting responsible development and deployment of robotics and AI for public benefit.

Bahar Irfan

Dr. Bahar Irfan is a Senior Research Scientist at Familiar Machines & Magic. Her research focuses on developing personal robots that can continually learn and adapt to assist in everyday life. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Digital Futures Fellow at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where her work on large language models for conversational robots received three best paper awards and was featured on Sweden’s educational broadcasting channel. Prior to that, she held R&D Associate roles at Disney Research Los Angeles, working on emotion-driven adaptation of conversations, and at Evinoks, developing customized solutions for industrial robots and smart buffets. Dr. Irfan
earned her PhD through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship jointly with the University of Plymouth and SoftBank Robotics Europe (Aldebaran), focusing on multimodal personalization in long-term human-robot interaction. She holds an MSc in Computer Engineering, specializing in user-centered task planning for household robotics, and
a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Boğaziçi University.