Portrait
Maria Teresa Parreira
PhD Candidate
Cornell University (NY, USA)
About Me

I study how robots can understand and act within human social environments, combining machine learning with behavioral and in-the-wild studies to build agents that are socially competent in practice, not only by design.

See my publications, press and academic training on Academia. Get familiar with other projects of mine over Other Projects.

“Understanding our sociality is critical to understanding our humanity”

Breazeal (2001)
Curriculum Vitae
Education
  • Cornell University (New York City, NY, USA)
    Cornell University (New York City, NY, USA)
    PhD in Information Science (minor in Computer Science)
    Advisors: Prof. Wendy Ju, Prof. Malte Jung
    Human-robot interaction, Deep Learning, Affective Computing
    Aug. 2022 - present
  • Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisboa, Portugal)
    Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisboa, Portugal)
    Integrated MSc in Biomedical Engineering, Magna cum laude (19/20)
    Thesis "Describing monolayer mechanoresponse from nuclear morphology and dynamics: a computational approach", with Prof. João Sanches (IST) and Prof. Kris Dahl (CMU, USA). Graded 20/20
    Sep. 2015 - Jan. 2021
  • Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)
    Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)
    Exchange Program, Computer Science Department
    Sep. 2018 - Feb. 2019
Experience
  • Google DeepMind (New York, USA)
    Google DeepMind (New York, USA)
    PhD Student Researcher, Affective Computing team
    Framework for evaluation of interaction friction and agentic adaptation in user-agent interactions
    May 2026 - Aug. 2026
  • Google DeepMind (New York, USA)
    Google DeepMind (New York, USA)
    PhD Student Researcher, Affective Computing team
    Large-scale multi-agent simulation for conversational repair
    Jun. 2025 - Aug. 2025
  • KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden)
    KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden)
    Research Engineer, Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning (Prof. Iolanda Leite)
    Offline RL for robot social behavior; frustration detection through thermal imaging; listener behavior generation; gender-biased AI
    Jun. 2021 - Jul. 2022
  • Institute for Systems and Robotics (Lisboa, Portugal)
    Institute for Systems and Robotics (Lisboa, Portugal)
    Research Intern, with Profs. João Sanches (IST) and Kris Dahl (CMU, USA)
    Computational analysis of microscopy images for cell mechanobiology
    Oct. 2019 - Apr. 2020
Honors & Awards
News
2025
May
The Cornell Chronicle covers our Robotability project (CHI 2025), also featured in ACM Tech News.
May
Panelist at "Youth at the Forefront: Leveraging Science and Social Inclusion for Sustainable Development", ECOSOC Youth Forum 2025 (UN HQ, NYC).
Apr
2024
Jul
A great summary of our research on "Bad Robots" with Accenture, from an old collaborator.
Jun
Moderated the Climate Finance Session at the ECOSOC Youth Forum (UN HQ, NYC).
Apr
Selected Publications (view all )
ERR@HRI 3.0 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Anticipation in Human-Robot Interactions

Maria Teresa Parreira, Micol Spitale, Maia Stiber, Shiye Cao, Amama Mahmood, Chien-Ming Huang, Hatice Gunes, Wendy Ju

Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI '26), Napoli, Italy, pp. 1381–1385 2026

ERR@HRI 3.0 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Anticipation in Human-Robot Interactions

Maria Teresa Parreira, Micol Spitale, Maia Stiber, Shiye Cao, Amama Mahmood, Chien-Ming Huang, Hatice Gunes, Wendy Ju

Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI '26), Napoli, Italy, pp. 1381–1385 2026

Bad Idea or Good Prediction? Comparing VLM and Human Anticipatory Judgment

Maria Teresa Parreira, Hongjin Quan, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Wendy Ju

Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '26), Edinburgh, pp. 933–937 2026

Bad Idea or Good Prediction? Comparing VLM and Human Anticipatory Judgment

Maria Teresa Parreira, Hongjin Quan, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Wendy Ju

Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '26), Edinburgh, pp. 933–937 2026

"Why the face?": Exploring Robot Error Detection Using Instrumented Bystander Reactions

Maria Teresa Parreira, Ruidong Zhang, Sukruth Gowdru Lingaraju, Alexandra Bremers, Xuanyu Fang, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Manaswi Saha, Michael Kuniavsky, Cheng Zhang, Wendy Ju

arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.00262 2025

"Why the face?": Exploring Robot Error Detection Using Instrumented Bystander Reactions

Maria Teresa Parreira, Ruidong Zhang, Sukruth Gowdru Lingaraju, Alexandra Bremers, Xuanyu Fang, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Manaswi Saha, Michael Kuniavsky, Cheng Zhang, Wendy Ju

arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.00262 2025

The Robotability Score: Enabling Harmonious Robot Navigation on Urban Streets

Matthew Franchi, Maria Teresa Parreira, Fanjun Bu, Wendy Ju

Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–17 2025

The Robotability Score: Enabling Harmonious Robot Navigation on Urban Streets

Matthew Franchi, Maria Teresa Parreira, Fanjun Bu, Wendy Ju

Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–17 2025

"Bad Idea, Right?" Exploring Anticipatory Human Reactions for Outcome Prediction in HRI

Maria Teresa Parreira, Sukruth Gowdru Lingaraju, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Alexandra Bremers, Manaswi Saha, Michael Kuniavsky, Wendy Ju

2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) 2024

"Bad Idea, Right?" Exploring Anticipatory Human Reactions for Outcome Prediction in HRI

Maria Teresa Parreira, Sukruth Gowdru Lingaraju, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Alexandra Bremers, Manaswi Saha, Michael Kuniavsky, Wendy Ju

2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) 2024

A Study on Domain Generalization for Failure Detection through Human Reactions in HRI

Maria Teresa Parreira, Sukruth Gowdru Lingaraju, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Manaswi Saha, Michael Kuniavsky, Wendy Ju

arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.06315 2024

A Study on Domain Generalization for Failure Detection through Human Reactions in HRI

Maria Teresa Parreira, Sukruth Gowdru Lingaraju, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Manaswi Saha, Michael Kuniavsky, Wendy Ju

arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.06315 2024

The Bystander Affect Detection (BAD) Dataset for Failure Detection in HRI

Alexandra Bremers, Maria Teresa Parreira, Xuanyu Fang, Natalie Friedman, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Alexandria Pabst, Mirjana Spasojevic, Michael Kuniavsky, Wendy Ju

2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 11443–11450 2023

The Bystander Affect Detection (BAD) Dataset for Failure Detection in HRI

Alexandra Bremers, Maria Teresa Parreira, Xuanyu Fang, Natalie Friedman, Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, Alexandria Pabst, Mirjana Spasojevic, Michael Kuniavsky, Wendy Ju

2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 11443–11450 2023

What Predicts Interpersonal Affect? Preliminary Analyses from Retrospective Evaluations

Maria Teresa Parreira, Michael J. Sack, Malte Jung

2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) (Late-Breaking Report) 2023

What Predicts Interpersonal Affect? Preliminary Analyses from Retrospective Evaluations

Maria Teresa Parreira, Michael J. Sack, Malte Jung

2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) (Late-Breaking Report) 2023

How Did We Miss This? A Case Study on Unintended Biases in Robot Social Behavior

Maria Teresa Parreira, Sarah Gillet, Katie Winkle, Iolanda Leite

Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '23 Companion), Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 11–20 2023

How Did We Miss This? A Case Study on Unintended Biases in Robot Social Behavior

Maria Teresa Parreira, Sarah Gillet, Katie Winkle, Iolanda Leite

Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '23 Companion), Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 11–20 2023

Learning Gaze Behaviors for Balancing Participation in Group Human-Robot Interactions

Sarah Gillet, Maria Teresa Parreira, Marynel Vázquez, Iolanda Leite

2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 265–274 2022

Learning Gaze Behaviors for Balancing Participation in Group Human-Robot Interactions

Sarah Gillet, Maria Teresa Parreira, Marynel Vázquez, Iolanda Leite

2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 265–274 2022

All publications