Best paper award :)

Some great news: Our first publication within the SharedSpace project won the best paper ward at “Social Robots. A Workshop on the Past, the Present and the Future of Digital Companions” which took place in conjunction with  PETRA 2018, the 11th ACM Conference on Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments.

My colleague and future PhD student Glenda Hannibal (she will be part of the TrustRobot PhD College) presented our work. In our paper entitled: “What makes people accept or reject companion robots: A research agenda”, we outlined our theoretical basis and methodological strategy for the SharedSpace project.

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Interview on the impact of digitalisation on social services

Today I was interviewed as an expert in the field of assistive robotics for a European-wide study on the impact of digitalisation on social services (conducted by Eurofund in cooperation of VVA and TNO).

I was asked in a structured interview for my views about digitalisation in social services in Austria with respect to robots in elderly care. Besides giving an overview on the state of the art of relevant robotic developments in this area, I above all tried to stress the relevance of user-centered development involving several stakeholders, not only primary user, but also secondary users and institutions such as insurances.

I will update this post as soon as the project report is available.

Elected member of the Young Academy

I am very honored to be one  of the 29 new members the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) welcomes  to its ranks. At the annual election on 20 April 2018, 16 female and 13 male researchers were “inducted in recognition of their scholarly achievements and their reputation within their respective fields”.

The Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) is Austria’s central non-university research and science institution. Its statutory mission is to “promote science in every way”.

My personal agenda for my 8 years election period is (1) promoting interdisciplinary research, (2) mentoring women in science, and (3) strengthening the “akademischen Mittelbau” (a specific administrative structure in the Austrian University System).x

HRI Doctoral College

Interested in pursuing a PhD in HRI (topic: trust in robots) in Vienna? Potentially, with me as co-advisor?

http://trustrobots.eu/

First ShardSpace Publication

I am happy to announce that my first publication on my new FWF Elise-Richter project SharedSpace was accepted for publication for a workshop held in conjunction with PETRA2018:

Social Robots. A Workshop on the Past, the Present and the Future of Digital Companions

The paper outlines the research agenda of the project and the underlying sociological framework. It is co-authored with Glenda Hannibal, who will also present the work at the workshop in Corfu in June.

Austrian HCI Networking Event

Last Friday I attended the first Austrian HCI Networking event, organized by Katta Spiel (PhD student TU Wien) and Alina Krischkowsky (PhD student University of Salzburg). It was a great event, where I had the chance to meet former colleagues from Salzburg, but also new people from all over Austria, working in HCI, I was not even aware of. We had great discussions getting to know the PhD topics of all students, but also among senior researchers. I am glad that 2 PhD students, finally took the initiative to bring Austria HCI researchers in  one location and I hope that this event becomes an annual thing!

Dagstuhl Seminar 2019

I am happy to announce that I will be co-organizing a Dagstuhl Seminar in 2019 on the topic:

Ethics and Trust: Principles, Verification and Validation

For more details click here