Mike Ligthart

Dr. Mike Ligthart is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, affiliated with the Artificial Intelligence department, Network Institute, and Social AI. His research focuses on child-robot interaction, social robotics, and personalized AI systems. He leads projects like the Droomrobot initiative to reduce medical trauma in pediatric cancer patients through robotic companions and the SOROCOVA project addressing educational gaps during the pandemic. He teaches courses on AI and Society, Multi-Agent Systems, and Socially Intelligent Robotics. Key research interests include long-term human-robot relationships, co-regulation mechanisms, and explainable AI in child-centered contexts.

His work integrates interdisciplinary approaches from robotics, psychology, and education, emphasizing ethical transparency and user-centric design. Notable contributions include developing humor-based personalization algorithms and frameworks for sustaining educational interactions. He has published extensively on topics like memory retention in child-robot relationships and co-creation methodologies. Current projects explore autonomous social robots for healthcare and transparent child-technology interfaces.