About

Dr Minja Axelsson is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science department in the School of MACS (Mathematical and Computer Sciences) at Heriot-Watt University. She is affiliated with the National Robotarium and the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.

She earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge at the Department of Computer Science and Technology (Affective Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory, AFAR), on the design and deployment of robots as mental wellbeing coaches. During her PhD, she was a visiting student at MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group. Following that, she conducted postdoctoral research at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and was a Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Human-Inspired AI, both at the University of Cambridge.

Research

Minja’s research focusses on:

• Human-robot interaction and social robotics
• Robots for wellbeing and socially assistive robotics (SAR)
• Co-design and participatory design for robotics
• Ethical design of social robots
• Countermeasures for unethical design of social robots, including “dark” patterns, deceptive designs, manipulation, and surveillance
• Empirical experimentation and user studies examining human perceptions and experiences of robots
• Socio-technical and ethical analysis of robots in society