Organization Committee

  • Alessandra Rossi, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
    a.rossi@herts.ac.uk

    Alessandra Rossi

    Alessandra is currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow / PhD student at the School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn. She is also a Visiting Lecturer at University of Hertfordshire. Alessandra received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Naples "Federico II", and her M.Sc. degrees thesis is entitled "Human Multirobot Interaction in Robot and Group Selection Tasks". Her research interests include multi-agent systems, social robotics, Human–(Multi)Robot Interaction, home companion and user profiling. Alessandra is also the team leader of the RoboCup soccer team "Bold Hearts", University of Hertfordshire.

  • Dr Patrick Holthaus, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
    p.holthaus@herts.ac.uk

    Patrick Holthaus

    Patrick is the manager of the Robot House research facility at the University of Hertfordshire. He is also a permanent Research Fellow in the Adaptive Systems Research Group and a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests include systems integration in heterogeneous environments, interaction architectures and behaviour coordination, and the social credibility of companion robots. Patrick was a postdoctoral researcher at the cluster of excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) and a member of the Cognitive systems engineering group working on the large-scale project Cognitive service robotics apartment. Patrick received his Ph.D. on the topic of an "Integrated concept of spatial awareness" which originates from research conducted in the Applied Informatics Group and SFB 673 "Alignment in Communication" at Bielefeld University where he also received a master's and a bachelor's degree in computer science.

  • Dr Giulia Perugia, Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University (Sweden)
    giulia.perugia@it.uu.se

    Giulia Perugia

    Giulia is a postdoctoral researcher at the Uppsala Social Robotics Lab led by Dr. Ginevra Castellano. She received a BA in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Roma Tre (Rome, Italy) in 2011, a MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Siena (Italy) in 2013, and a double degree PhD in Assistive Technologies from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC; Barcelona, Spain) and Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e; Netherlands) in 2018. As a scientist, she is interested in understanding and modeling the emotional and social linkage that the interaction with social robots triggers, how this can be used for assistive and educational purposes, and how it might impact and shape our society. At present, she is involved in the project COIN, Co-adaptive human-robot interactive systems, a project funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) within which she is building novel models of human-robot affective co-adaptation to apply to educational scenarios.

  • Sílvia Moros, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
    s.moros@herts.ac.uk

    Silvia Moros

    Sílvia is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. She received an Industrial Engineering degree at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), a PAIR Master degree in Automated Production and Robotics at the Fundació CIM - UPC and a Robotics and Automation Master degree at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. She is also finishing a Psychology degree at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She was previously part of the now finished EU Horizon2020 BabyRobot project. Her research interests include social robotics, Human-Robot Interaction and design of robotics behaviours for children with autism.

  • Dr Marcus Scheunemann, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
    m.scheunemann@herts.ac.uk

    Marcus Scheunemann

    Marcus has studied Computer Science, with a minor in Business at the University of Ulm and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in Germany. His focus was on artificial intelligence and robotics, he was team leader of a group of staff and students of a robot soccer team competing in world championships. There, he worked on his Diplom (corresponding MSc) on "Multi-hypotheses particle filter for goal modeling for a humanoid soccer robot". He later obtained a PhD with the topic of "Autonomous and Intrinsically Motivated Robots for Sustained Human-Robot Interaction" from the University of Hertfordshire - on a PhD scholarship of Computer Science. His focus was on the fully autonomous behavior generation for robots to interact with humans based on information-theoretic measures. Till today, he remained in the RoboCup community where he focuses on machine learning and on developing a framework based on ROS 2. His current research interests include Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Information Theoretic Approaches to AI and Intrinsic Motivation.. More on mms.ai.