Keynote Speakers
Keynote Speakers
Maja Matarić is a Chan Soon-Shiong distinguished professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (rasc.usc.edu), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab (robotics.usc.edu), past interim Vice President of Research (Jan 2020-Jul 2021), past Vice Dean for Research (Jul 2006-Dec 2019) and past President of the USC faculty and the Academic Senate (2005-06). She received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987.
She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, AAAI, and ACM, and recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) from President Obama, and the Okawa Foundation, NSF Career, the MIT TR100 Innovation, the IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society Early Career, the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Innovation, Viterbi School Service Award and Junior Research Awards, and is featured in the documentary movie “Me & Isaac Newton.”
She is an advisory editor of three major journals and has published extensively in various areas of robotics. Here is her Google Scholar profile.
Prof. Mataric’ is actively involved in K-12 outreach, leading the USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center and developing free curricular materials for elementary and middle-school robotics courses in order to engage student interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics.
Her Interaction Lab’s research into socially assistive robotics is aimed at endowing robots with the ability to help people reach their potential through individual assistance (for convalescence, rehabilitation, training, and education) and team cooperation (for habitat monitoring and emergency response).
Research details are found at robotics.usc.edu/interaction.
Elisabeth André is a full professor of Computer Science and Founding Chair of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Augsburg University in Germany where she has been since 2001. She has multiple degrees in computer science from Saarland University, including a doctorate. Previously, she was a principal researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH) in Saarbrücken.
Elisabeth André has a long track record in multimodal human-machine interaction, embodied conversational agents, affective computing and social signal processing. Her work has won many awards including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz Prize 2021, with 2.5 Mio € the highest endowed German research award.
She has undertaken very successful interdisciplinary collaborations with psychologists, pedagogues, medical scientists and media artists that have resulted in several award-winning multimodal user interfaces, among them pedagogically well-grounded and empirically validated learning environments for children and young people. Drawing on the concept of computer-based role play with virtual characters, she has promoted a novel form of experience-based learning, for example, to help children and young people cope with bullying at school, develop intercultural sensitivity or master socially challenging situations, such as job interviews.
Elisabeth André has served as a General and Program Co-Chair of major ACM SIGCHI conferences including ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) and ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI). She has given invited keynotes at top tier scientific conferences, such as International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence – Pacific – Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-PRICAI) or IEEE International Symposium on Robotics and Human Interactive Communications (RO-MAN) back in 2014.
Elisabeth André has been elected a member of the prestigious Academy of Europe, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and AcademiaNet. To honor her achievements in bringing Artificial Intelligence techniques to HCI, she was awarded a EurAI fellowship (European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence) that recognizes “individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe”.
This talk is sponsored by EurAI.
Shuji Hashimoto received the B.S., M.S. and Dr. Eng. Degrees in Applied Physics from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1970, 1973, and 1977, respectively.
He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, Toho University from 1979. In 1991 he moved to Waseda University as a Professor of the Department of Applied Physics.
In Waseda University he served as the Director of the Humanoid Robotics Institute for ten years from 2000. During 2006-2010 he was the Dean of Faculty of Science and Engineering. He was appointed and served as the Senior Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of the University from 2010 to 2018. He was awarded the title of Commander in the Order of the Merit of the Italian Republic in 2018.
His research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, “KANSEI” Information Processing, Sound and Image Processing and Meta-Algorithm. He is a member of major academic societies including IEEE, IEICE and RSJ. Currently he is a Professor Emeritus and Research Advisor of Waseda University. He is also the Vice President of the Japanese Academy of Facial Studies, one of the Leaders in the Gundam Global Challenge and the CEO of XELA Robotics Co. Ltd.