Profiles

Kerstin Dautenhahn is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.  She holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Socially Intelligent Robotics. Previously she was the Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics (2018-2025). She is cross-appointed to the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, and the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She is a visiting professor at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. At Waterloo, she is the Director of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory (SIRRL).

The main areas of her research are human-robot interaction, social robotics, assistive technology, AI robotics, developmental robotics, and health technologies.

Chrystopher Nehaniv is a Mathematician, Computer Scientist, Complex Adaptive Systems Researcher, and, since August 2018, Full Professor in the Departments of Systems Design Engineering and of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Moojan Ghafurian is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining SYDE, she was a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2020-2023) and the Inaugural Wes Graham postdoctoral fellow at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science (2018-2020) at the University of Waterloo. She got her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in 2017, and her research interests and background are in human-computer/robot interaction, social robotics, affective computing, and cognitive science. Her research explores computational models of how humans interact with computers to inform user-centered design of socially and emotionally intelligent technologies in multiple domains, especially in healthcare and for supporting older adults, persons with dementia, and caregivers.