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”
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Education
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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 ComputingAug. 2022 - present -
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 20/20Sep. 2015 - Jan. 2021 -
Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)Exchange Program, Computer Science DepartmentSep. 2018 - Feb. 2019
Experience
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Google DeepMind (New York, USA)PhD Student Researcher, Affective Computing team
Framework for evaluation of interaction friction and agentic adaptation in user-agent interactionsMay 2026 - Aug. 2026 -
Google DeepMind (New York, USA)PhD Student Researcher, Affective Computing team
Large-scale multi-agent simulation for conversational repairJun. 2025 - Aug. 2025 -
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 AIJun. 2021 - Jul. 2022 -
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 mechanobiologyOct. 2019 - Apr. 2020
Honors & Awards
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NVIDIA Academic Grant2025
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HRI Pioneers, Honorable Mention (HRI 2025)2025
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Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo Award for best alumna, IST2021
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Academic Merit / Excellence awards, IST2015-2020
News
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
"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
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