Organizers

 Dr. Elmira Yadollahi is an Assistant Professor at Lancaster University, UK. She holds a PhD in robotics and computer science from EPFL, Switzerland, and Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal. Her research tackles explainability, multimodal perception, and explanation to enhance robot transparency. She has organized Workshops on Child-Robot Interaction at ICSR’20, IDC’21, IDC’24, & IDC’25 and is an associate editor of the IJCCI Journal.

Dr. Zhen Bhai is an Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester, USA. She completed her PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge and was a post-doctoral fellow at CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute and Language Technology Institute. Her research focuses on creating playful, embodied, and intelligent learning environments to promote K-12 AI literacy, STEM education, and early childhood development.

Dr. Shruti Chandra is an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science at UNBC. Her research focuses on leveraging social robots to enhance people’s well-being in education, with a strong emphasis on practical and real-world applications. She has organised a number of workshops on CRI at ICSR’20, IDC’20, and IDC’21

Aayushi Dangol is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Washington. Her research investigates how to responsibly deploy AI in ways that support children’s learning, development, and interaction.

Dr. Isabel Neto is an Assistant Professor at Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisbon. Her research focuses on how robots, with their roles, modalities, decision-making algorithms, and ultimately behaviors, can foster inclusion within groups of children with diverse abilities, such as children with and without visual or hearing impairments, as well as native and immigrant children with varying levels of oral language proficiency

Shyamli Suneesh is a PhD candidate at Lancaster University researching explainability in child–robot interaction to support children’s AI literacy. She organized the workshop Designing for Children’s Digital Well-being at IDC’23.