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About

Teena Hassan is a leading researcher at the intersection of social robotics, explainable AI (XAI), and human-robot interaction (HRI). Her work focuses on making autonomous social robots not only more intelligent but also more transparent and trustworthy for everyday users. Hassan’s most impactful contribution is her architecture for self-explaining social robots, which enables robots to articulate the reasoning behind their actions during interaction—a critical step for user acceptance and debugging. This work, published in 2022, has already garnered 32 citations, reflecting its influence in the growing field of XAI for embodied agents. She has also made significant strides in addressing the ethical deployment of robots, particularly through her use-case analysis of privacy implications for social robots in private households. Additionally, her research on dynamically constructed episodic memory for robots aims to enable more natural, context-aware social interactions, while her earlier work on recognizing emotions from facial expressions targets applications in assistive robotics for dementia care. Through these contributions, Hassan is shaping a future where robots are not only capable collaborators but also understandable and privacy-respecting companions.