Organizers

Katrin Solveig Lohan
Heriot-Watt University

Katrin Solveig Lohan joined the school of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University as a Lecturer in 2013. She is deputy director of the Robotics Lab. 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 from Bielefeld University, Germany in 2012, where she was associated with the ITALK Project as Ph.D. student. Her main research interests are in understanding the learning mechanisms between parents and infant, between adults and adults, and between humans and robots in order to create a natural interaction with a robot.



Mary-Ellen Foster
Heriot-Watt University

Mary Ellen Foster is a Research Fellow in the Interaction Lab at the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. She received her Ph.D. in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh, and has previously worked in the Robotics and Embedded Systems Group at the Technical University of Munich and in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include embodied communication, natural language generation, and multimodal dialogue systems. In particular, she is interested in designing, implementing, and evaluating practical artificial systems that support embodied interaction with human users, such as embodied conversational agents and human- robot dialogue systems. She has worked on European and national projects including COMIC, JAST, ECHOES, JAMES, and EMOTE.



Patricia Vargas
Heriot-Watt University

Patricia A. Vargas is Founder Director of the Robotics Laboratory at Heriot-Watt University, Associate Professor/Reader in Computer Science and Robotics and Executive Member of the Edinburgh Center for Robotics. She is also International Liaison for the Brazilian Students Recruitment and Academics Exchange program at Heriot-Watt University. She was 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 State University of Campinas UNICAMP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her Master's Degree in Computer Science, was focusing on Computational Intelligence also at State University of Campinas UNICAMP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is member of the IEEE, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. She is also a member of the Higher Education Academy, the British Computer Society and the Scottish Computer Science Alliance theme groups: Complex Systems Engineering, Modelling and Abstraction and Multimodal Interaction. Patricia has also recently joined the IEEE Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man) Standing Steering Committee.



Kazuhiko Kawamura
Vanderbilt University, School of Engineering

Bio: Kazuhiko (Kaz) Kawamura is Research Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor Emeriti of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Engineering Management at Vanderbilt University. He joined Vanderbilt University in 1981 and was promoted to professor in 1988. Professor Kawamura spent a sabbatical in 2004 at the University of Reading, UK, where he co-developed the US-UK Workshop on Cognitive Robotics, Intelligence, and Control. He served as director of the US-Japan Center for Technology Management (1991-1999) and the Center for Intelligent Systems (1991-2012). He served as an external University Professor at Waseda University for two years (2010-2011). Professor Kawamura served as founding chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Service Robots (2000-2006) and as general chair of several related IEEE international conferences. He served as associate editor of the International Journal of Humanoids Robotics (2004-2014). In 2002, he was elected a fellow of IEEE for pioneering work on understanding, modeling, and implementing human-robot synergistic systems. His research interests include cognitive robotics, cognitive control, robot skills learning and human-robot interaction in social settings.



Hisato Kobayashi
Hosei University Tokyo

Hisato Kobayashi was born in Japan 1951. He graduated from Waseda University, he received both master degree and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Waseda University in 1975 and 1978 respectively. During 1977-1982, he was a research associate of Tokyo University Agriculture and Technology. He joined Hosei University in 1982. He spent almost one year at Stuttgart University Germany 1988-1989 as an invited visiting researcher of Alexander Humboldt Foundatiion. He is now professor of Hosei University Tokyo, department of art and technology he was president of Hosei University Research Institute, California. During 1998-2001, he was a visiting scholar of Stanford University and doing a joint project entitled "Sleep Smart Project." He was Editor in Chief of Advanced Robotics, which was issued by Robotics Society in Japan and published by Brill Publisher in Holland. He was elected as fellow of IEEE in 2002. His research interests cover control theory, mechatronics systems, robotics and health care systems.