Elena Malnatsky
Papers
4
Total Citations
8
H-Index
2
About
Elena Malnatsky is an emerging researcher specializing in child-robot interaction, social robotics, and personalized educational technology. Her work sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, participatory design, and AI-driven learning, with a particular focus on making social robots more relatable and effective for young users. Malnatsky's most notable contribution is her child-centered framework for personalizing robot interactions, introduced in her most-cited work (2024), which engaged 102 children aged 8–13 in actively shaping how robots communicate with them. This participatory philosophy carries through her subsequent research, including an innovative exploration of age-based humor personalization as a social motivator in child-robot relationships. Her work recognizes that relatability is not a one-size-fits-all quality, and that children across different developmental stages require meaningfully distinct interaction styles. More recently, Malnatsky has extended her focus to dialogic learning, proposing a hybrid approach that integrates foundational AI models into structured educational dialogues between children and robots — addressing critical concerns around safety and pedagogical integrity. Though early in her career with a growing citation record, her research addresses timely and consequential questions about how robots can serve as genuine learning companions for children.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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