The Furhat Conference on Social Robotics

Catherine Pelachaud (CNRS-ISIR) is Director of Research in the laboratory ISIR, Sorbonne University. Her research interest includes socially interactive agent, nonverbal communication (face, gaze, gesture and touch), and multi-party interaction. With her research team, she has been developing an interactive virtual agent platform, Greta, that can display emotional and communicative behaviors. She is co-editor of the ACM handbook on socially interactive agents (2021).

Alessandro is Professor of Computational Social Intelligence at the University of Glasgow and Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Socially Intelligent Artificial Agents. Previously, Alessandro was with the Idiap Research Institute in Switzerland. His main research interest is Social Signal Processing, the computing domain aimed at modelling, analysis and synthesis of nonverbal communication in human-human and human-machine interactions. Alessandro has published more than 160 works that attracted 8600+ citations and is (or has been) co-I and co-PI of more than 15 national and international projects. In addition, Alessandro serves as a scientific advisor of Substrata and is a co-founder of Klewel, a knowledge management company recognized with national and international awards.

Axel Reitzig is currently the Director of Innovation at the Innovation Center of the St. Vrain Valley School District. His core mission is to develop innovative, dynamic and high-quality programming, both at the Innovation Center as well as across SVVSD by creating and cultivating strategic partnerships, identifying and exploring cutting-edge technologies, collaborating with other SVVSD staff and departments, coordinating the diffusion of innovative programming from the Innovation Center throughout the district and beyond, and participating in leadership at the district, state and national levels.

Katherine is studying Computer Science on an Integrated Masters at Durham University. Her interests are in Artificial Intelligence and NLP. Katherine is currently developing Furhat as a social partner for isolated people, through their conversational AI, Jill.

Bilge Mutlu is the Sheldon B. & Marianne S. Lubar Professor of Computer Science, Psychology (affiliate), and Industrial Engineering (affiliate) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he directs the People and Robots Laboratory and co-directs the Collaborative Robotics Laboratory. His research program focuses on building human-centered methods and principles to enable the design of robotic technologies and their successful integration into the human environment. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in human-computer interaction and user experience (UX) design on the UW–Madison campus. He is the founding chief editor of the HRI section of Frontiers in Robotics & AI and is an associate editor for Human-Computer Interaction as well as Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction. He co-chaired the Human-Robot Interaction Steering Committee and is serving as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Human-Computer Interaction Consortium. Dr. Mutlu has an interdisciplinary background that combines design, computer science, and social and cognitive psychology and a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a former Fulbright fellow, the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, Vilas Associates Award, and the UW–Madison Provost’s Early Career Award, and the co-recipient of the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence from Carnegie Mellon University. His research has received 18 best paper awards and nominations and recognition in international press including the Economist, New Scientist, and Discovery News.