Panelists

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro is Assistant Professor at the School of Media Studies of The New School, a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. He is also co-founder and vice-chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and spokesperson for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an international coalition of NGOs. His research focuses on the ethical, legal and policy implications of robotic systems. He is currently working on a book that examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to the design and use of consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, autonomous vehicles, UAV drones, and military robots. He received his PhD in philosophy and master of computer science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Jodi Forlizzi

Jodi Forlizzi is a Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research ranges from understanding the limits of human attention to understanding how products and services evoke social behavior. She designs and researches systems ranging from peripheral displays to social and assistive robots. Her current research interests include designing educational games that are engaging and effective, designing services that adapt to people’s needs, and designing for healthcare. Jodi is a member of the ACM CHI Academy and has been honored by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for excellence in HRI design research. Jodi has consulted with Disney and General Motors to create innovative product-service systems.

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Michael A. Goodrich

Michael A. Goodrich received his PhD at Brigham Young University in 1996 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department under the direction of Dr. Wynn Stirling. Following graduation, he completed a two year postdoctoral research associate position at Nissan CBR in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mike works in human-robot interaction, with his most important papers in the areas of metrics, user interfaces for remote vehicles, and multi-robot systems.  He has spent a lot of time trying to help the HRI community grow and succeed. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at BYU.

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Guy Hoffman

Guy Hoffman is Assistant Professor at IDC Herzliya and co-director of the IDC Media Innovation Lab. Before, he was a research fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at MIT. Hoffman holds a Ph.D from MIT in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI), and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University. He also studied animation at Parsons School of Design in NYC. Hoffman heads the Human-Robot Interaction group, focusing on human-robot collaboration and companionship, embodied cognition for social robots, anticipation and timing in HRI and multi-agent MDPs, nonverbal behavior in HRI, robotics for the performing arts, and non-anthropomorphic robot design. His research papers won several top academic awards, including Best Paper awards at HRI and robotics conferences in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2013, and Best Paper Finalist nominations in 2012 and 2015. In both 2010 and 2012, he was selected as one of Israel’s most promising researchers under forty.

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Meg Leta Jones

Meg Leta Jones is an assistant professor in Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture & Technology department where she researches and teaches in the area of technology law and policy. Her research interests cover a wide range of technology policy issues including comparative censorship and privacy law, engineering design and ethics, legal history of technology, robotics law and policy, and the governance of emerging technologies. Prof. Jones received her B.A. and J.D. from the University of Illinois and her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Engineering & Applied Science, (Technology, Media & Society)

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David D. Luxton

David D. Luxton is a Research Health Scientist at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego California where he serves as the Principal Investigator of the United States Department of Defense’s Millennium Cohort Study – the largest prospective health study in U.S. Military history. He is also an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. He previously served as a Research Psychologist and Program Manager at the Department of Defense’s National Center for Telehealth & Technology (T2) in Tacoma Washington. Dr. Luxton is also a licensed clinical psychologist and a veteran of the United States Air Force. Dr. Luxton conducts extensive research and writing on technology-based treatments, telemedicine, and emerging technologies including artificial intelligence applications in behavioral health care. He specializes in clinical best practices and ethics when working with technology. Dr. Luxton’s clinical research is focused in the areas of military population health, psychological health, and suicide prevention and he is Principal Investigator or Co-investigator on several large federally funded clinical trials. He regularly serves on national workgroups and committees and is a highly sought after subject matter expert and consultant.

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Jason Millar

Jason Millar teaches Robot Ethics in the philosophy department at Carleton University, in Canada. He has a degree in engineering physics, and worked for several years designing telecommunications and aerospace electronics before turning his full-time attention to philosophy. He is currently finishing up a PhD in philosophy, spending most of his time thinking about the design of automation technologies and robotics. His current research uses bioethical theories to analyze the ethical aspects of the relationships that can exist between designers, robots, and users, to see what they can tell us about designing better technology. He thinks those relationships can tell us a lot. Jason has authored book chapters, reports and articles on robot ethics, design ethics, privacy, and science and technology policy. His work on the ethics of autonomous cars has been widely featured in the popular media. Finally, he is co-author of a chapter in the forthcoming book, Robot Law, edited by Ryan Calo, Ian Kerr, and Michael Froomkin. That book is going to be great, and it should be of particular interest to anyone interested in today’s workshop.

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Ayse P. Saygin

Prof. Ayse P. Saygin directs the Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology Lab (Saygin Lab) at the University of California, San Diego, where she is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science and Neurosciences. She received a PhD in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego, followed by a European Commission Marie Curie fellowship at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience and Wellcome Trust Centre for Functional Neuroimaging at University College London. She holds an MSc. in Computer Science from Bilkent University, and a BSc. in Mathematics from Middle East Technical University, both in Ankara, Turkey. Dr. Saygin and her lab study human perception and cognition using a range of experimental and computational methods, including psychophysics, EEG, MRI, fMRI, brain stimulation, neuropsychological patient studies, machine learning, and brain-computer interfaces. As an NSF CAREER awardee, Dr. Saygin has built upon her PhD and postdoctoral work to develop a research program exploring the perceptual and neural mechanisms supporting the processing biologically and socially important objects and events such as the body movements and actions of other agents. With additional support from DARPA, Kavli Institute for Mind and Brain, the Qualcomm Institute, and the Hellman Foundation, Saygin lab also aims to inform human-robot interaction by integrating methods and theory from cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, human perception, artificial intelligence, computational modeling, social robotics and social cognition. http://www.sayginlab.org

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Jean Scholtz

Dr. Jean Scholtz  is currently a chief scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where unfortunately her work has nothing to do with robotics.  She is, however, the chair of the NASA Standing Review Panel on Human Factors in Space and robotics and automation is one of the areas of research that she and her committee review.  Previously Dr. Scholtz worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she conducted research on human- robot interaction (HRI) in Urban Search and Rescue, collecting data at many of the USAR Competitions.  She also helped set up a test bed for evaluation of EOD robots.  While she was a program manager at DARPA, she funded a workshop on HRI.   Dr. Scholtz published over 20 papers on HRI in the 10 years she was actively involved in the field, given a number of tutorials, and taught evaluation at several HRI summer schools.

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John Sullins

John P. Sullins is an associate professor of philosophy at Sonoma State University in California where he has taught since 2004.  He received his PhD in 2002 from the Philosophy, Computers, and Cognitive Science program at Binghamton University in New York.  His current research and publications involve the study of computer ethics, malware ethics, and the analysis of the ethical impacts of military and personal robotics technologies.   He is the 2011 recipient of the Herbert Simon Excellence in Research award from the International Association of Computers and Philosophy.  He lives in Sonoma County California with his wife and two daughters.

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Eric Valor

Eric Valor is a self-taught Information Technology professional, starting with PCs in 1980. In 1992 he taught himself UNIX and TCP/IP networks in order to expand his knowledge and experience. He enjoyed that hobby as a professional career for two decades before the physical limitations inherent from advanced ALS forced his retirement. At that time he was the manager of network operations for Mercedes Benz Research & Development, North America, where he was responsible for seven different sites across the United States. After his forced medical retirement he used the same method he employed to learn Information Technology to learn neurological biology and medicine.

As part of his new life mission Eric:
* Maintains a blog where he analyzes research as a service to other Person(s) with ALS (PALS)
* Provides Information Technology advice to PALS to help them transition to assisted communications
* Is an active and aggressive advocate for awareness
* Consults with non-profit and privately-funded biotechs
* Designs and participates in patient-driven drug trials
* Co-founded two nonprofits dedicated to research and experimental treatment access (SciOpen Research Group and the ALS Emergency Treatment Fund)
* Is Board Member of and Science & Technology Adviser to Team Gleason.

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Aimee van Wynsberghe

Aimee van Wynsberghe is currently an Assistant Professor in Ethics of Technology at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Over the last six years she has dedicated her studies to applied ethics in the design and analysis of robots and related ICT systems. She completed both her PhD and post-doctoral studies at the University of Twente in the Philosophy department. In 2012, her PhD was nominated for the Georges Giralt Award for Best PhD thesis in robotics in Europe. This is a huge honour given that the award is normally given to scholars from the technical disciplines. She has presented at Yale University, co-organized International conferences on robotics and has published for both the engineering and ethics communities. She is currently on the advisory committee of two European projects and is coordinator of the robotics taskforce for the 3TU Center for Ethics and Technology. Her research interests include: normative ethics, pragmatic ethics, values in design, embedded values, care ethics, robot ethics, responsible research and innovation, and interdisciplinary studies.