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About

Rossana Damiano is a leading researcher at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and affective computing. Her work primarily focuses on leveraging AI to create emotionally intelligent systems, with a particular emphasis on assistive robotics for autism therapy and cultural heritage applications. In her most cited work, she developed a sensemaking system that uses the Plutchik "wheel of emotions" to group and suggest user-generated stories from multiple affective viewpoints in museums, demonstrating how commonsense reasoning can enhance cultural experiences. Damiano’s research on human-robot interaction with autistic children has been highly influential, including studies on how autistic children form mental models of humanoid robots and comprehensive assessments of assistive robotics’ effectiveness, pros, cons, and future pathways. She has also pioneered the use of ontologies and open data to enrich personalized social interactions between humans and robots, and has innovatively applied UX Personas to define stable robot characters for therapeutic contexts. With over 40 citations across her key works, Damiano’s contributions are shaping the future of socially assistive robotics and emotionally-aware AI systems.