Biography
Brian Scassellati is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Yale University.
His research
focuses on building embodied
computational models of human social behavior, especially the developmental
progression of early social skills. Using
computational modeling and socially interactive robots, his research evaluates models of
how infants acquire social skills and assists in the diagnosis and
quantification of disorders of social development (such as autism). His other interests include humanoid robots, human-robot
interaction, artificial intelligence, machine perception, and social learning.
Dr. Scassellati received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 2001. His dissertation work (Foundations
for a Theory of Mind for a Humanoid
Robot)
with Rodney
Brooks used models drawn from developmental psychology to
build a primitive system for allowing robots to understand people.
His work at MIT focused mainly on two well-known humanoid
robots named Cog
and Kismet.
He also holds a Master of Engineering in Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering (1995), and Bachelors degrees in Computer
Science and Electrical Engineering (1995) and Brain and Cognitive
Science (1995), all from MIT.
Dr. Scassellati's research in social robotics and assistive robotics
has been recognized within the robotics community, the cognitive
science community, and the broader scientific community. He
was named an Alfred
P. Sloan Fellow in 2007 and received an NSF
Career award in 2003. His work has been awarded
four best-paper awards. He was the chairman of the IEEE Autonomous
Mental Development Technical
Committee from 2006-2007. He is the program chair
of the IEEE
International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) in
both 2007 and 2008 and will be the program chair for the upcoming IEEE/ACM International
Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
in 2009.
Descriptions of his recent work have
been published in the Wall Street Journal (reprinted here),
the New
York Times Sunday Magazine, Popular
Science, New
Scientist, the APA
Monitor on Psychology, SEED
Magazine, and NPR's All Things Considered.
A detailed CV can be obtained here.
