Program Chairs

Mariacarla Staffa

Mariacarla Staffa, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. She received the M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Naples Federico II with honors, in 2008. She got a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Automation Engineering from the University of Napoli in 2011. She is member of the PRISMA (Projects of industrial and service robotics, mechatronics and automation) and of the PRISCA (Projects of intelligent robotics and advanced cognitive systems) Laboratories, making research in the fields of Cognitive Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Human-Robot Interaction. She is mainly interested in exploring computational neuroscience and cognitive robotics to generate innovative strategies and solutions for scientific problems and technological limitations. Her work mainly focuses on supervisory attentional systems for executive monitoring and behaviours scheduling, automatic learning techniques based on reinforcement-learning, differential evolution strategies, artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms, multi-robot coordination systems, multimodal human-robot interaction, gesture interpretation, interpretation of Humans’ intentions and emotional states.


Mehdi Khamassi
Mehdi Khamassi

Dr. Mehdi Khamassi is currently a permanent research scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR) at Sorbonne Universités / Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC). He is also a Visiting Researcher in the Robotics Lab at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, UK. He obtained his Habilitation to Direct Researches in Biology from UPMC in 2014. His research interests include decision-making, reinforcement learning, performance monitoring, interaction and reward signals in social and non-social contexts.


Daniela Conti
Daniela Conti

Daniela Conti is currently a Marie Sklodowska Curie Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), working on robotics for autism and intellectual disability (CARER-AID project). She is a graduate (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) in Psychology (2008, 2010) and B.Sc. in Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Social Education (2002), all awarded with the highest distinction (110/110 cum laude), and received the Ph.D. in Neuroscience at University of Catania, Italy (2016). During her Ph.D., she was visiting scholar for 1 year the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at Plymouth University (UK). After the first graduation, she was practicing in clinical institutions specialized in the care of intellectually disabled. Indeed, she believes that to be a successful researcher in the field of people care one should not only “know” but also “do”. In fact, she became nationally renowned for her work in psychology and psychiatric rehabilitation with several publications in scientific journals and co-authored a textbook adopted in the courses of Psychiatry. She is licensed clinical psychologist certified by National Board of Psychologists (Italy), since September 2011.


Program Committee

  • Silvia Rossi, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
  • Paul Baxter University of Lincoln, UK
  • Costas Tzafestas, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
  • Amedeo Cesta, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione - CNR, Italy
  • Hee Tae Jung, College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amhers
  • Matteo Saveriano, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
  • Alessandro di Nuovo, Department of Computing, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
  • Mohamed Chetouani, Professor at Sorbonne Université
  • Angelo Cangelosi, Plymouth University and Manchester University, UK
  • Santo Di Nuovo, University of Catania, Italy
  • Lyuba Alboul, Centre for Automation and Robotics Research, Sheffield Robotics, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
  • James Kennedy, Disney Research Los Angeles, US
  • Alessandra Rossi, Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK
  • Abolfazl Zaraki, University of Hertfordshire, UK