Keynote Speakers
Maja Matarić, University of Southern California / Google DeepMind, USA
ACM Distinguished Speakers Program
Socially Assistive Robotics Right Now: Personalized Embodied Systems for In-Home Support of Health, Wellness, Education, and Training
Bio:
Maja Matarić is a Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. She has a PhD and MS in CS & AI from MIT, and a BS in CS from Kansas University. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMACAD), and a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, AAAI, and ACM.
She is the recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring from President Obama, the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award, the ACM Athena Lecture Award, the ACM Eugene Lawler Award, the Mass Robotics Medal, the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT TR35 Award, and the IEEE-RAS Early Career Award. She authored The Robotics Primer (MIT Press) and led the USC K-12 STEM Center.
A pioneer of socially assistive robotics, her research develops personalized support for a wide range of users and needs, including autism, stroke, dementia, anxiety, among others.
(Photo courtesy of Maja Matarić)
Albrecht Schmidt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
Rethinking Thinking: Multimodal Generative AI Systems to Enhance Human Cognition
Bio:
Albrecht Schmidt is the Dean of the Faculty for Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), where he also holds the Chair for Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media. His research and teaching interests include human-centered artificial intelligence, intelligent interactive systems, ubiquitous computing, digital media technologies, and digital technologies for human augmentation.
He studied computer science in Ulm and Manchester and received his PhD from Lancaster University in 2003. Albrecht was the conference co-chair of ACM SIGCHI 2023, served on the editorial board of the ACM TOCHI journal, and is the co-founder of the ACM conferences TEI and Automotive User Interfaces.
He was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2018, elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2020, and named an ACM Fellow in 2023.
(Photo courtesy of Albrecht Schmidt)
Corina Sas, Lancaster University, UK
Ethical Design for Wellbeing and Affective Health
Bio:
Corina Sas is Professor in Human-Computer Interaction and Digital Health with the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, UK, with research interests in technologies for wellbeing and mental health. She has published over 200 papers, and her work has received six Best Paper and Honourable Mention Awards at ACM CHI and DIS conferences, as well as British HCI.
Corina is an ACM Distinguished Member for contributions to the ethical design of wellbeing and mental health technologies. She has received several awards for excellence in research leadership and has been an investigator on competitively awarded grants totalling over £15 million.
She has served as Technical Program Co-Chair of ACM CHI 2024 and Papers Co-Chair of British HCI 2025, and is a member of the Editorial Boards of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction and the Taylor & Francis Human-Computer Interaction journal.
Abstract:
Emotional wellbeing and mental health are topics of significant social importance, reflected in the growing body of HCI work aimed at supporting them. Research in this area spans a broad space, from affective computing to affective interaction, and the ethical design of wellbeing and mental health technologies has become increasingly important.
This talk provides an overview of Corina Sas’s research in this space, illustrated through design exemplars of technologies for wellbeing and mental health, with an emphasis on self-regulation. The talk also highlights the value of existing research for articulating novel design implications for ethical wellbeing and mental health technologies.
(Photo courtesy of Corina Sas)