Emilia Barakova

Emilia Barakova is an Associate Professor at the Industrial Design Department of Eindhoven University of Technology. She leads the Social Robotics Lab and Transdisciplinary Research & Design cluster, focusing on robotics for autism intervention and cognitive assistance.

• PhD in Mathematics & Natural Sciences (University of Groningen, 1999)
• MSc in Electronics & Automation Engineering (Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria)

Her research merges robotics, cognitive science, and AI to develop embodied agents for social skills training in autistic children and well-being enhancement for people with disabilities. She co-developed the TiViPE programming environment for customizable robot therapy scenarios.

Key publication trends show emphasis on:

• Human-robot interaction for autism therapy
• Emotion recognition via movement analysis
• Visual programming frameworks for robot customization
• Multi-agent systems in social training

She serves as Associate Editor for journals including International Journal of Social Robotics and Transactions of Human-Machine Systems, and has held academic positions at RIKEN Brain Science Institute and German-Japanese Robotics Research Lab.