Iolanda Leite

Iolanda Leite is an Associate Professor at the Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She holds a PhD from the Technical University of Lisbon and has held postdoctoral positions at Yale Social Robotics Lab and Disney Research. Her research focuses on developing robots capable of understanding and responding to human social dynamics, emphasizing trust, interaction efficiency, and ethical considerations in human-robot collaboration.

She has led or co-led numerous research projects funded by institutions such as the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP), NordForsk, and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. Her work spans socially acceptable autonomy, interactive learning, and human-robot teaming, with a particular interest in ethical implications and inclusive design.

Leite has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Best Paper Award at ACM/IEEE HRI 2023 and the Jacobs Foundation Early Career Fellowship 2018. She actively contributes to the academic community as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction and has organized major conferences like HRI 2023 and IROS 2023.

In teaching, she oversees degree projects in computer science, electrical engineering, and robotics at both undergraduate and graduate levels, emphasizing practical and theoretical foundations in AI and robotics.