Cristina Zaga

Cristina is a Ph.D. candidate at the HMI group (University of Twente) and a visiting scholar at the RiG lab (Cornell University). Cristina’s doctoral research focuses on designing “robothings” everyday robotic objects and toys, to promote children’s prosocial behaviors in collaborative play. She envisions a future of robothings, robotics embedded in everyday objects and architecture, that meaningfully interact with people to empower them. Cristina in her after-hours explores artistic intervention to advance the discourse on human-centered robotics, using speculative design to make what she calls poetic robots. Her work in HRI interaction design for robothings and poeticrobots received an HRI student design competition award and has been exhibited at the Eindhoven Design Week 2017. Cristina was selected as Google Women TechMaker Scholar 2018 for her research quality and her support to empower women and children in STEM.