IAS Workshops　#007
IAS-FRIS Symposium on
Social Robots and Ethical Design 2025
Speaker Lists
IAS-FRIS Symposium on
Social Robots and Ethical Design 2025
Invited Speakers
Darius Torabi
International Programs in Law (Doctoral) and Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University
Talk Title
When Machines Bloom into Life: VitaBots and the Moral Status of Biohybrid Lifeforms
Biography:
Darius Torabi is a Doctoral Candidate and MEXT Scholar (Japanese Government) in the International Programs in Law at Kyushu University, where he explores the conceptual boundaries of traditional legal doctrines in light of emerging technologies. Having gained professional experience as both a Research Associate at the global law firm Freshfields and a Lecturer at EBS University, he now conducts empirical research in social robotics with Professor Yueh-Hsuan Weng at Kyushu University's Institute for Advanced Study. Darius is a member of the German-Japanese Lawyers' Association and serves as Subgroup Leader on Healthcare Robots within the IEEE P7017 Working Group, which develops standards for Design-Centered Human-Robot Interaction and Governance. Being specialized in legal philosophy, criminal law and criminology, with legal education spanning Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, his doctoral research focuses on how legal frameworks can account for agents that are neither human nor fully under human control.
David Torabi
International Programs in Law (Doctoral) and Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University
Talk Title
Privacy in the Age of Social Robots: Rethinking Consent Through Visual Design for Meaningful HRI
Biography:
David Torabi is a Doctoral Candidate in the International Programs in Law at Kyushu University and a recipient of the Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship. He studied philosophy at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and law at the University of Passau in Germany. Following his legal studies, he gained professional experience as a Graduate Research Associate at the global law firm Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman). David is a member of the German-Japanese Lawyers' Association and serves as Subgroup Leader on Privacy-Sensitive Robots within the IEEE P7017 Working Group, which develops standards for Design-Centered Human-Robot Interaction and Governance. Alongside his doctoral work, he conducts empirical research in social robotics with Professor Yueh-Hsuan Weng at Kyushu University's Institute for Advanced Study. Apart from the above areas, his broader research interests include European regulatory law, intellectual property, legal philosophy, and metaverse law.
Diana Saplacan Lindlom
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
Talk Title
A cross-cultural study between Norway and Japan on consent on the use of social robots in public and private spaces – Users’ perspectives
Biography:
Diana Saplacan Lindblom, Ph.D., is a researcher at the University of Oslo, at the Department of Informatics, Robotics and Intelligent Systems Research Group (ROBIN), Norway, and a Senior Lecturer at Kristianstad University, Sweden. She is the PI of the Robots as Welfare Technologies and Actors for Elderly Care: A Proposal of a Nordic Model for Integration of Advanced Assistive Technologies (ROBOWELL) research project funded by NORDFORSK, a Scandinavian project taking place in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. She currently works in the Vulnerability in Robot Society (VIROS) research project and in the Ethical Risk Assessment of Artificial Intelligence in Practice (ENACT), both funded by the Research Council of Norway. During Spring 2023, she was a visiting researcher at the Human-Robot Interaction Lab, Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, and a guest researcher at Tohoku University, at the Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences. She received her Ph.D. degree (2020) from University of Oslo, Norway, in design and Human-Computer Interaction/Human-Robot Interaction. She is or was involved in other research projects, such as: Multimodal Elderly Care Systems (MECS), Predictive and Intuitive Robot Companion (PIRC), Robots and Society (RO-SO), Universal Design of Robots (UD-Robots).
Eduard Fosch-Villaronga
eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies, Leiden University
Talk Title
Science for Robot Policy in Practice: From Systematic Reviews to Stakeholder Engagement and Testing
Biography:
Eduard Fosch-Villaronga is Associate Professor and Director of Research at eLaw–Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University (NL). Eduard is an ERC Laureate investigating the legal and regulatory aspects of robot and AI technologies, with a focus on healthcare, governance, diversity, and privacy. He is the Principal Investigator of his ERC Starting Grant SAFE & SOUND (2023–2028) and the group leader for eLaw’s contributions to the Horizon Europe BIAS Project and the AI:Liner Project. Eduard received the EU Safety Product Gold Award in 2023 for his work on diversity in robotics safety. He also serves as an expert for the Royal Netherlands Standardization Institute (NEN) and a committee member for ISO/TC 299/WG 2 on Safety Requirements for Service Robots.
Hsiu-Ping Yueh
Research Center for Digital Humanities,
National Taiwan University
Talk Title
Inclusion? Exclusion? Feelings of rejection in games with robots
Biography:
Dr. Hsiu-Ping Yueh is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development at National Taiwan University. She also serves as the Director of the Research Center for Digital Humanities. Previously, she was the Deputy Provost of the university, responsible for academic affairs, and held positions as the Director of both the Center for Teaching and Learning Development and the Digital Learning Center. Dr. Yueh has conducted extensive research in learning science and technology, smart living technologies related to gerontechnology, cognitive aging, and human interaction with social robots that assist in daily life. She is a recipient of the NSTC Outstanding Research Award and currently holds the position of President of the Social Robotics Society of Taiwan.
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Jessica K. Barfield
School of Information Science, Intelligent Robotics Arm Lab, University of Kentucky
Talk Title
Evaluating Theories Guiding the Ethical Design and Use of AI-Enabled Social Robots
Biography:
Jessica K. Barfield is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, where she performs research on the design and use of social robots. Her topics of interest include the self-disclosure of personal information to robots as a function of robot appearance, how cues signaling the social characteristics of robots influence their evaluation, and how techniques of AI guiding a robot's behavior influence user interactions with the robot. She is a Faculty Fellow at the James E. Beam Institute, was a Southeastern Conference Emerging Scholar Fellow, and contributes to the IEEE ROMAN workshop on DEI.
Jia-Yang Juang
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Taiwan University
Talk Title
Soft Robotics: Shape Morphing and Locomotion by Controlled Buckling, Twisting, Bending, and 4D Printing
Biography:
Dr. Jia-Yang Juang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Taiwan University in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006, all in Mechanical Engineering. From 2006 to 2011, he worked as a Research Staff Member and Senior Principal Engineer at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Western Digital Corp., respectively, in Silicon Valley, California. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty at National Taiwan University in 2011 and is now a full professor and department chair.
Dr. Juang's research interests include (1) Soft robotics, (2) Bioinspired design, (3) Thin-film materials, and (4) Machine learning. He holds 16 granted United States patents, one China patent, and several pending United States patents. He has published over 66 journal papers and 58 conference papers. He is on the editorial board of three journals. He has reviewed manuscripts for over 111 journals, including Science Robotics, Soft Robotics, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Science, and Materials Today. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of ASME. He was awarded the 2021 ASME ISPS Distinguished Speaker Award. He received the NSTC Outstanding Research Award in 2024.​
Jim Tørresen
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
Talk Title
How should Robot Assistants behave?
Biography:
Jim Torresen is a professor at the University of Oslo, where he leads the Robotics and Intelligent Systems research group. He is also a PI at the interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion (RITMO). He received his M.Sc. and Dr.ing. (Ph.D) degrees in computer architecture and design from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University of Trondheim in 1991 and 1996, respectively. He has been employed as a senior hardware designer at NERA Telecommunications (1996-1998) and at Navia Aviation (1998-1999). Since 1999, he has been a professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo (associate professor 1999-2005). Jim Torresen has been a visiting researcher at Kyoto University, Japan for one year (1993-1994), four months at Electrotechnical Laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan (1997 and 2000) and a visiting professor at Cornell University, USA for one year (2010-2011). His research interests now include artificial intelligence, ethical aspects of AI and robotics, machine learning, robotics, and applying this to complex real-world applications. He has also acted as an evaluator for proposals in EU FP7 and Horizon2020 and is currently project manager/principal investigator in four externally funded research projects/centres. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (NTVA) and the National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology (NENT), where he is a member of a working group on research ethics for AI.
Joshua C. Gellers
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of North Florida
Talk Title
Designing Ethical Robot Governance: Lessons from Science Fiction and Games
Biography:
Joshua C. Gellers, PhD, is the inaugural faculty fellow for artificial intelligence, director of the Digital Humanities Institute, and professor of political science at the University of North Florida. He is also an expert with the Global AI Ethics Institute and member of two IEEE working groups. Josh’s research focuses on the intersection of environmental governance, rights, and technology. He has published dozens of articles or chapters, edited a special issue of Earth System Governance Journal on AI and digitalization, and written two books, The Global Emergence of Constitutional Environmental Rights (Routledge 2017) and Rights for Robots: Artificial Intelligence, Animal and Environmental Law (Routledge 2020). He is currently co-editing a unit on environments for the AI in Society series published by Oxford University Press and a volume on environmental law and AI for Edward Elgar. Josh holds a BA in political science from the University of Florida, MA in climate and society from Columbia University, and an MA and PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine.
Juliana Bowles
School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews
Talk Title
Logical reasoning for responsible interacting robots
Biography:
Juliana Bowles (née Küster Filipe) is a full professor at the School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her recent research combines formal methods and AI for health applications. She coordinated the EU H2020 project Securing Medical Data in Smart Patient-Centric Healthcare Systems (Serums) which dealt with security and privacy aspects of future-generation healthcare systems. She was awarded a project from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation to explore safe and ethical human-robot interactions with Dr Yueh-Hsuan Weng, University of Kyushu, Japan, which inspired the interest in reasoning for social interacting robots. Bowles received her PhD (Dr.rer.nat) from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, in 2000.
Kamil Karczewski
University of Graz
Talk Title
​Robots That Care
(So We Don’t Have To): Interpassivity in Experimental Robot Governance
Biography:
Kamil Karczewski is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Graz. He received his PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) in 2023. His current book project explores the entangled histories of nationalism and queerness in interwar Poland. He was previously a Past & Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London, a Fellow at the Herder Institute in Marburg, and at the German Historical Institute in Washington. His research focuses on the history of sexuality and its entanglements with nationalism, approached through transnational, multilingual, and digital perspectives.
Kamil Mamak
Department of Criminal Law, Jagiellonian University
Talk Title
Can Robot Design Help Mitigate the Risks of Responsibility Gaps?
Biography:
Kamil Mamak is a philosopher and a legal scholar. He is an associate professor of law at the Jagiellonian University. He is an ERC laureate (Starting Grant). He was a postdoctoral researcher at the RADAR: Robophilosophy, AI Ethics and Datafication research group at the University of Helsinki in 2021-2024. He is also a Member of the Board of the Cracow Institute of Criminal Law. He holds PhDs in law (2018) from Jagiellonian University and philosophy (2020) from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Cracow. He has authored five book monographs, including “Robotics, AI and Criminal Law: Crimes against Robots,” published by Routledge in 2023. His newest book “Ethics in Human- like Robots” was published by Routledge in the end of last year. He has published more than 50 peer- reviewed journal articles and contributed chapters. His works were published in international journals, including the European Journal of Criminology; Ratio Juris; Ethics and Information Technology; International Journal of Social Robotics; AI & Society; Medicine, Healthcare, and Philosophy; Science and Engineering Ethics;European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice; Frontiers in Robotics and AI, and Criminal Justice Studies. He received a research grant from the National Science Center in Poland. He is a recipient of the Minister’s Scholarship for Outstanding Young Scientists and the Scientific Award of “Polityka” weekly 2023 (in the category: philosophy/law).
Mizuki Takeda
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Toyohashi University of Technology
Talk Title
Physical and Mental Human-Robot Interaction for Assistive Robots
Biography:
Mizuki Takeda received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 2015, 2017, and 2020, respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Aichi, Japan. His research interests include assistive robots, human–robot cooperation systems, and robot ethics. He is a member of IEEE, JSME, and RSJ.
Peishan Yang
Department of Social Work, National Taiwan University
Talk Title
Smart Care and Human-Centered Compassion: Toward a Holistic Policy Blueprint for the Dignity of Older Adults
Biography:
Dr Peishan Yang is Professor in the Department of Social Work, and Director of Research Ethics Center at National Taiwan University (NTU). Dr Yang is the Chief Editor of NTU Social Work Review, which is ranked as the No.1 Social Work Journal in Taiwan. She received her PhD degree from Columbia University, School of Social Work in 1997, and joined the faculty of NTUSW. She has extensive experiences in practice, research and policy. Her research projects often lead to forward-looking policies. Since 2015 till now, her research has focused on themes of integrated health, elder abuse, and digital aging with multidisciplinary teams.
Ruth Lewis
Standards Committee, IEEE SSIT
Talk Title
The Exploration of the Adoption Trends of IEEE AI Socio-Technical Standards
Biography:
Ruth Lewis, Director of Technology Foresight Consulting, Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical), Graduate Diploma Digital Communications, Master of Strategic Foresight, National Engineering Register. Ruth is an experienced strategic IT consultant, academically qualified futurist and professional engineer based in Melbourne, Australia, with a particular focus on introducing new technologies to business, creating managed services and creating innovative governance models. Ruth’s passion is to work towards the ethical and sustainable development and use of emerging technologies such as AI for the good of society, enabling her clients to make wise and informed decisions and investments today to enable their preferred futures. Ruth is the Vice President (Standards) of SSIT, Chair of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) Standards Committee, Board Member of Standards Association, Board Member of SSIT, and a contributor to many ethically aligned AI technical standards, and was awarded the IEEE SA 2022 Standards Medallion for leadership in promoting the development of IEEE technology and society standards.
Weijane Lin
Department of Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University
Talk Title
Designing Ethical Futures: How Game-Based Simulation Prepares Students for Technology's Moral Challenges
Biography:
Dr. Weijane Lin is a Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at National Taiwan University (NTU) and is currently the Excelsior Chair Professor in the College of Liberal Arts. She also holds the position of Deputy Director at the Research Center for Digital Humanities and is a research fellow at the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Robotics. With a Ph.D. in Informatics from Kyoto University, Japan, Dr. Lin specializes in multimedia studies and is dedicated to enhancing the accessibility and usability of media technologies for learning. She was the Division Director of e-Learning (2016-2024) at the NTU Computer and Information Networking Center, actively contributing to various online learning initiatives that focus on learning management systems at both local and global levels. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Educational Technology, one of the foremost journals in educational research.
Yasuhisa Hirata
Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University
Talk Title
Co-Creating Human-Centered Future Living: AI Robotics through Living Labs and Moonshot Houses
Biography:
Yasuhisa Hirata is a Professor in the Department of Robotics at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. He received his B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Tohoku University in 1998, 2000, and 2004, respectively. He has been conducting research on Human-Robots Interaction, Multiple Robots Coordination, Factory Automation Robots, etc. He is serving as a project manager of the Moonshot R&D program in Japan. He is also serving as an AdCom member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee Cluster on The Health and Medical Robotics.
Rudy (Ying-Yin) Huang
Human Factors Engineering Lab, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University
Talk Title
Effect of User Familiarity and visual complexity on presence and performance in a simulated VAR Workspace
Biography:
Rudy Huang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU). She has established the research group “Human Factors Engineering Lab.” at NTU. Her research focuses on visual ergonomics, VR/AR development & application, simulation and training, human-robot interaction, psychophysics, occupational safety & health, and innovative technology in smart manufacturing industry and product development. Rudy received the EST (Ergonomics Society of Taiwan) Outstanding Young Scholar Award in 2024 for her research activities and dedication in ergonomics. She also serves as the Chair of International Relations Committee for EST (TW) and as the Co-Chair and a committee member for the Visual Ergonomics technical committee of IEA (International Ergonomics Association).
Yush-Hsuan Weng
Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University
Talk Title
Bridging Ethics and Reality: Integrating Thought Experiments and Empirical Insights in Robot Ethics
Biography:
Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng is an Associate Professor at the Inamori Frontier Program, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Kyushu University and Associate Professor (Cross-appointment) at the Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS), Tohoku University. He has been an Assistant Professor at FRIS, Tohoku University (2017-2023), Visiting Assistant Professor at Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong (2018) and TTLF Fellow at Stanford Law School (2018-2021). He received his Ph.D. in Law from Peking University and his M.S. in Computer Science from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. He is strongly interested in interdisciplinary studies, especially in issues concerning the interface between Artificial Intelligence and Law, including Robot Law, Social Robotics, and Legal Informatics. During his Ph.D. studies, he has founded ROBOLAW.ASIA and CHINA-LII, which are China’s first initiatives in AI Law and Free Access to Law.
Zonghao Dong
Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University
Talk Title
Social Acceptance of Anthropomorphism in Zoomorphic Robots: Insights from a Robot Dog Study
Biography:
Zonghao Dong (Member, IEEE) received the B.E. degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2018 and the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Robotics from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 2020 and 2023. He is currently a specially appointed assistant professor in the Department of Robotics at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. His main research interests include mobile robots, mobile manipulation, system integration, physical assistive devices, and physical human-robot interaction.