ECE PhD student Soomin Shin has been awarded a $15,000 scholarship from the Waterloo Data and AI Institute, recognizing her innovative research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and real-world physical systems.
Supervised by Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, Shin is a member of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab (SIRRL), where researchers explore how robots can interact with people in meaningful, socially aware ways. Her work focuses on building scalable social robot systems that can operate sustainably in real-world environments by integrating advanced AI capabilities.
Designing robots to support pediatric speech therapy
Within SIRRL, Shin’s research focuses on designing socially assistive robots for pediatric speech therapy, with the goal of developing what she describes as “genuinely usable social robots in the wild.”
Since the beginning of her PhD, Shin has been collaborating closely with speech-language pathologists (SLPs) from Kickstart Therapy Centre. Over more than two years of partnership, they have co-designed a robot-assisted therapy system grounded in the real needs of therapists and children.
This collaborative, user-centered approach ensures that the technology is not only innovative, but also practical and effective in clinical settings.
From prototype to practice
Shin recently evaluated the first prototype of her system—developed over two years—through a six-month real-world deployment at the therapy centre. The deployment provided valuable insights into how robot-assisted therapy systems perform in everyday use.
She is now advancing the next phase of the project: developing an authoring system that allows therapists to create and customize robot interactions in real time, without requiring technical support from researchers.
By placing control directly in the hands of clinicians, this work aims to remove one of the key barriers to adopting socially assistive robotics in practice.
Advancing sustainable and scalable social robotics
The long-term vision of Shin’s research is to enable therapists to easily generate robot-assisted therapy activities on-site, adapting to their evolving needs—similar to how people now interact with flexible AI tools and agents.
By reducing reliance on ongoing technical development and maintenance, her work addresses a longstanding challenge in the field: making socially assistive robots both sustainable and scalable in real-world environments.
Choosing Waterloo for world-leading mentorship
For Shin, pursuing her PhD at the University of Waterloo was driven by the opportunity to work with Dr. Dautenhahn, a globally recognized leader in social robotics and human-robot interaction.
“When I was applying to PhD programs, many universities had strong researchers in human-robot interaction, but Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn is one of the world’s leading scholars in social robotics and human-robot interaction,” says Shin. “I was very excited about the opportunity to receive her guidance and mentorship during my doctoral studies.”
With support from the Waterloo Data and AI Institute scholarship, Shin’s research continues to push the boundaries of how AI-enabled robots can support human wellbeing—bringing socially assistive robotics closer to everyday clinical use.