Organizers

Ruby Valverde Ibanez
Heriot-Watt University

Ruby Valverde Ibanez is currently a PhD student at Heriot-Watt University. Her research is to advance the believability and social acceptance of robot companions in every day life. Furthermore she is interested in Data Mining, Memory Modeling, Emotional states as well as Emotional Memory Modeling.



Katrin Solveig Lohan
Heriot-Watt University

Katrin Solveig Lohan joined the school of mathematical and computer science at the Heriot-Watt University as a Lecturer in 2013. Previously, she was working at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), as a junior Post Doc in the RobotDoc project founded by the Marie Curie Fellowship. She obtained her Ph.D. in Engineering at the Bielefeld University, Germany in 2012, where she was associated with the ITALK Project as Ph.D. student. The main research interests are in understanding the learning mechanisms between parents and infant, between adults and adults, and between humans and robots to create a natural interaction with a robot.



Micael Couceiro
University of Coimbra

Micael Couceiro obtained the BSc, Teaching Licensure and Master degrees on Electrical Engineering (Automation and Communications), at the Engineering Institute of Coimbra, Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra (ISEC-IPC). He is currently a PhD student on Electrical and Computer Engineering (Automation and Robotics) at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra (FCTUC), under a PhD Grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), having delivered his Thesis on September 2013. Over the past 5 years, he has been conducting scientific research on several areas besides robotics, namely computer vision, sports engineering, economics, sociology, digital media, and others, all at the Mobile Robotics Laboratory, Institute of Systems and Robotics (MRL-ISR), and at RoboCorp research group from IPC. This resulted on more than 20 scientific articles in international impact factor journals and more than 40 scientific articles at international conferences. Besides research, he has been invited for lecturing, tutoring and organization of events (e.g., professional courses, national and international conferences, among others), both in the public and private domains.



Patricia Vargas
Heriot-Watt University

Patricia Vargas is Director of the Robotics Laboratory, International Liaison for Brazilian Students Recruitment and Academics Exchange program at Heriot Watt University. Were a Research Fellow at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) within the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex, England, United Kingdom, until September 2008. She received her PhD in Computer Engineering in 2005, focusing on Computational Intelligence, Bio-inspired Algorithms and Machine Learning at the Department of Computer Engineering and Industrial Automation DCA , Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering FEEC, State University of Campinas UNICAMP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her Master’s Degree in Computer Science, was focusing on Computational Intelligence at the Department of Systems Engineering (DENSIS), Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering FEEC, State University of Campinas UNICAMP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is member of the and http://www.ieee-ras.org/, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. IEEE she is also a member of SICSA theme groups: Complex Systems Engineering, Modelling and Abstraction and Multimodal Interaction.