Luisa P. Schuster

University of California San Diego, New York University

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Luisa P. Schuster is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of robotics, animal behavior, and neuroscience. Her work centers on interactive neurorobotics—a field that uses robotic agents to study and elicit social behaviors in animals, while simultaneously recording neural and behavioral responses to inform robot design. Her most-cited paper, "When rats rescue robots" (2018, 31 citations), broke new ground by demonstrating that rats exhibit prosocial, rescue-like behaviors toward trapped robots, challenging assumptions about animal-robot interaction and opening doors for ethical robotics and biomimetic design. In her more recent work, "Interactive neurorobotics: Behavioral and neural dynamics of agent interactions" (2022), Schuster advances a framework for capturing rich neural data during real-time agent interactions, using these insights to scaffold more adaptive, socially aware robots. Her contributions are notable for bridging ethology and engineering, offering a biologically grounded approach to building machines that can understand and respond to living creatures. With growing citation impact, Schuster is shaping a new paradigm where robots are not just tools, but participants in the study of social intelligence.