[iva] PhD position in social robotics – child wellbeing and mental health, Uppsala University

[Ginevra Castellano]

PhD position in social robotics with focus on child wellbeing and mental
health

 <https://usr-lab.github.io/> Uppsala Social Robotics Lab

Department of Information Technology

Uppsala University

**Deadline: 5 December 2024**

 

Are you interested in working with social robotics for child wellbeing and
mental health applications, with the support of competent and friendly
colleagues in an international environment? Are you looking for an employer
that invests in sustainable employeeship and offers safe, favourable working
conditions? We welcome you to apply for a doctoral student position at
Uppsala University. 

 

Project description


The PhD project will investigate the use of social robots in child wellbeing
and mental health applications.

 

The PhD project is part of the large collaborative project MICRO (Measuring
children’s wellbeing and mental health with social robots), recently funded
in the CHANSE-NORFACE Enhancing Well-being for the Future call. 

 

The MICRO project aims to advance knowledge on how linguistic abilities and
the ability to successfully engage in social interactions affect children’s
wellbeing and mental health. To achieve this objective, the project will
explore the use of social robots as new tools to measure children’s
wellbeing and mental health in a school context. This will be done with a
particular focus on vulnerable groups that are potential targets for
preventative interventions, such as children with developmental language
disorder and refugee children.

 

The PhD project will focus on (1) Human-robot interaction design for the
measurement of child wellbeing and mental health, and (2) Child-robot
interaction studies with vulnerable groups.

 

This is an interdisciplinary project which will be supervised by an
interdisciplinary team with expertise in social robotics and human-robot
interaction (Ginevra Castellano, main supervisor), child health and welfare
(Georgina Warner), and developmental psychology (Gustaf Gredebäck).

 

The PhD project will involve collaborations with the other partners of the
MICRO project’s consortium at the University of Cambridge (Hatice Gunes,
Jenny Gibson, Tamsin Ford), ETH (Emily Cross) and Bielefeld University
(Friederike Eyssel), as well as other stakeholders (e.g., BRIS - Barnens
Rätt i Samhälletm, European Commission’s Centre for Advanced Studies,
UNESCO, etc.).

 

Duties


The successful candidate will work with social robots in child wellbeing and
mental health applications. The candidate is expected to program robots to
develop robot’s capabilities and conduct empirical human-robot interaction
studies for data collection and evaluation. The PhD project will focus on
(1) Human-robot interaction design for the measurement of child wellbeing
and mental health and (2) Child-robot interaction studies with vulnerable
groups.

 

The candidate will join the Uppsala Social Robotics Lab
(https://usr-lab.github.io/) at the Vi3 Division of the Department of
Information Technology, Uppsala University. Our vision is to develop
computational social abilities that allow robots to behave in a socially
intelligent way in natural interaction with humans. The natural testbeds for
our research are socially assistive scenarios where robots provide not only
physical, but also social support to humans, where robotic technologies have
the potential to bring benefits to the society we live in, for example in
application areas such as education and assistive technology, by enhancing
the lives of children and other groups that require specialised support and
intervention. The lab is equipped with a range of different robotic
platforms, including Furhat, Pepper, NAO and Cozmo.

 

A Ph.D. student is expected to devote their time to graduate education
mainly. The rest of the duties may involve teaching at the Department,
including also some administration, to at most 20%.

 

Requirements and information on how to apply
<https://uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/type:job/jobID:771414/?where=26> at this
link.

Deadline for applications: 5 December 2024

 

Starting date: 31 March 2025 or as agreed

 

--

Dr. Ginevra Castellano

Professor 

Director, Uppsala Social Robotics Lab

 <https://usr-lab.github.io/> https://usr-lab.github.io/

Department of Information Technology

Uppsala University

Box 337, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden

 <https://www.katalog.uu.se/profile/?id=N14-947> Webpage

 

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