Dr Jiaee Cheong

University of Cambridge (UK)

Harvard University (US)

Dr. Cheong completed her doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge and is currently pursuing her postdoctoral studies at Harvard University. She is interested in advancing responsible and equitable AI systems for healthcare and human wellbeing.

Dr Fethiye Irmak Dogan

University of Cambridge (UK)

Dr Dogan is a postdoc at the University of Cambridge and received her PhD in Computer Science from KTH, Sweden. She focuses on autonomous robots in human environments and received the KROS Interdisciplinary Research Award in Social HRI (IEEE RO-MAN’25) and was an Early Career Contribution finalist in the Outstanding Women in Robotics & Automation Awards (IEEE ICRA’25). She organised several workshops in ACM/IEEE HRI and IEEE RO-MAN and serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE RA-L.

Alva Markelius

University of Cambridge (UK)

Alva is a PhD candidate at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge researching adaptive interaction frameworks for marginalised populations in foundation model driven social robotics. She is also recipient of Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™ award 2024 and committee chair of the Centre for Human Inspired AI Early Career Community. She also holds an MSt degree in AI Ethics & Society at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Emily S. Cross

ETH Zurich (CHE)

Dr Cross is a Professor of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, where she leads the Social Brain Sciences Lab. She and her team explore fundamental questions related to social perception and interaction, with a particular focus on fostering and sustaining meaningful encounters between humans and artificial agents, and how aesthetics shapes our interactions with other humans and AI. After completing her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College, she pursued postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute and has held faculty positions at Radboud University Nijmegen, Bangor University, University of

Glasgow, and Macquarie and Western Sydney Universities

Professor Friederike Eyssel 

Bielefeld University (DEU)

Dr Eyssel is Professor of Psychology and head of the Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research Group at the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology, Bielefeld University, Germany. She is co-author of various textbooks on social robots, among them “HRI: An introduction (2020, 2024 Cambridge Univ. Press, Hanser, 2020, 2022), “Robots in Education” (2021, Routledge), and “Theory and practice of sociosensitive and socioactive systems” (2022, Springer). She received the Bielefeld University Award for Sustainable Engagement for Gender Equality in 2021, the Bielefeld University Karl-Peter Grotemeyer Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2021 and the IEEE-RAS Cognitive Robotics Distinguished Lecturer Award, 2022-2024 and 2025-2027.

Professor Ginevra Castellano

Uppsala University (SWE)

Dr Castellano is a Professor in Intelligent Interactive Systems at Uppsala University, where she directs the Uppsala Social Robotics Lab. Her research focuses on social robotics, human-robot interaction, and governance of AI and robotics. She has led projects on ethical and trustworthy HRI in education, healthcare, and transportation, and co-authored the AI Policy Research Summit 2024 Roadmap. She is currently the coordinator of the CHANSE-NORFACE MICRO (Measuring children’s wellbeing and mental health with social robots) project (2025-2028). She was a General Chair at the ACM/IEEE HRI’23 Conference

Professor Hatice Gunes

University of Cambridge (UK)

Hatice Gunes is a Full Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics & Director of the AFAR Lab at University of Cambridge. She spearheads award-winning research on multimodal, social, and affective intelligence for AI systems, particularly embodied agents and robots, by cross-fertilizing research in Machine Learning, Affective Computing and Nonverbal Behaviour Understanding. Prof Gunes has been named among the “World's Top 2% Scientists” by Stanford University in Elsevier for 5 consecutive years, she has also been awarded a prestigious EPSRC Fellowship to investigate adaptive robotic EQ for wellbeing and named a Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute.