Elisabeth AndréView profile
Professor
Elisabeth André is a Full Professor of Computer Science and Chair of Multimedia Concepts and Applications at University of Augsburg, where she has been faculty since 2001. She previously served as Managing Director of the Institute for Computer Science at Augsburg University from 2004 to 2006. Professor André has received multiple prestigious professorship offers, including W3-Professorships in Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Systems from University of Stuttgart and Human-Machine Interaction from Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg in 2009. Her academic journey began with a Diploma in Computer Science (1988) and Dr. rer. Nat. (1995) from Saarland University. Before joining Augsburg, she spent over a decade as a Scientific Researcher at DFKI GmbH (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), where she rose to Principal Researcher and was appointed a DFKI Research Fellow. Professor André's research focuses on designing and evaluating interactive multimodal user interfaces, experimental learning environments with animated characters, and affective computing. She is internationally recognized as a pioneer in embodied conversational agents, having organized one of the first international workshops on the topic in 1997. Her work stands out for its empirical foundation, including extensive corpus studies of human behaviors to inform virtual agent behavior modeling. Notably, she has conducted significant cross-cultural research with Japanese partners to develop culture-specific behaviors in virtual agents. Her publication record shows a consistent trajectory of innovation in human-computer interaction, with particular emphasis on multimodal analysis, gaze behavior simulation, and emotion recognition systems. The research trends in her recent work demonstrate increasing sophistication in input recognition methods and the development of practical toolboxes (AuBT, EmoVoice, SSI) that have been adopted by research institutions worldwide. 2007 Alcatel-Lucent Fellowship at Universität Stuttgart Best Paper Finalist at International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (2007-2009) 2005 Convivio Best Demo Award 2000 Best Paper Award at International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces 1998 RoboCup Scientific Award Multiple student projects winning international awards including GALA Awards and TEI conference awards Professor André has supervised 2 completed dissertations and is currently guiding 11 PhD students and 1 Habilitation candidate. Her leadership extends to major research projects including EU-funded initiatives (METABO, E-Circus, IRIS, DynaLearn, CALLAS) and DFG projects (CUBE-G, OC-Trust). She serves on numerous editorial boards and has held significant organizational roles in major conferences including IUI, IVA, and CASA. Her laboratory has developed multiple software toolkits that are used internationally in large-scale research projects, demonstrating the practical impact of her work. Current research directions include advanced emotion recognition systems, culture-adaptive virtual agents, and applications of her technology to educational and healthcare domains.




