Cynthia Breazeal (Associate Professor at MIT)

Cynthia Lynn (Ferrell) Breazeal (born November 15, 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is the director of the Personal Robots Group (formerly the Robotic Life Group) at the MIT Media Laboratory. She is best known for her work in human-computer interaction.

Cynthia Breazeal received her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989, her S.M. in 1993 and her Sc.D. in 2000 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, both from MIT.

She developed the robot Kismet as a doctoral research project looking into expressive social exchange between humans and humanoid robots. Now you can see Kismet in a museum which she has decided to put up for all of her past creations.

Breazeal has also developed, planetary micro-rovers, upper-torso humanoid robots, expressive robotic faces, and plant-like robots.

In 2004, she was the lead researcher on the Sociable Machines project focusing on social interaction and socially situated learning between people and humanoid robots.

She also has a prominent role as a virtual participant in a popular exhibit on robots with the traveling exhibit, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, interacting with a real C-3PO (voiced by Anthony Daniels as she spoke to the audience through a pre-recorded message displayed on a large plasma flat-screen display.