Education, Research, Press
I investigate how humans and AI systems communicate and repair interaction breakdowns, combining multimodal machine learning with human‑in‑the‑loop methods to improve social competence in human‑AI interaction.
Publications
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
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
Children, Robots, and Reproducibility: A Review of Recent Reproducibility Challenges in Child-Robot Interaction
Rebecca Stower, Micol Spitale, Elmira Yadollahi, Maria Teresa Parreira, Nida Itrat Abbasi, Iolanda Leite, Hatice Gunes
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI) 2026
Children, Robots, and Reproducibility: A Review of Recent Reproducibility Challenges in Child-Robot Interaction
Rebecca Stower, Micol Spitale, Elmira Yadollahi, Maria Teresa Parreira, Nida Itrat Abbasi, Iolanda Leite, Hatice Gunes
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI) 2026
Visible Adoption, Untracked Contribution: GitHub Evidence of the Accountability Gap Across Three Cohorts of an HCI Prototyping Course
Maria Teresa Parreira, Pranav Prabhat Sinha, Hauke Sandhaus, Wendy Ju
arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.14054 2026
Visible Adoption, Untracked Contribution: GitHub Evidence of the Accountability Gap Across Three Cohorts of an HCI Prototyping Course
Maria Teresa Parreira, Pranav Prabhat Sinha, Hauke Sandhaus, Wendy Ju
arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.14054 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
Responsible Outcomes and Operational Tools for Sustainability in HRI (ROOTS-HRI)
Maria Teresa Parreira, Ilaria Torre, Sarah Schömbs, Erik Lagerstedt, Laetitia Tanqueray, Karla Bransky, Ilaria Alfieri, Maria Raffa, Carolin Straßmann, Benjamin Lebrun, Samantha Stedtler
Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '26), Edinburgh, pp. 1423–1425 (Workshop) 2026
Responsible Outcomes and Operational Tools for Sustainability in HRI (ROOTS-HRI)
Maria Teresa Parreira, Ilaria Torre, Sarah Schömbs, Erik Lagerstedt, Laetitia Tanqueray, Karla Bransky, Ilaria Alfieri, Maria Raffa, Carolin Straßmann, Benjamin Lebrun, Samantha Stedtler
Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '26), Edinburgh, pp. 1423–1425 (Workshop) 2026
2025
Sustainable Human-Robot Interaction: From Current Trends to Future Visions
Ilaria Torre, Maria Teresa Parreira, Hannah Pelikan, Erik Lagerstedt, Sarah Schömbs, Katie Winkle, Sara Ljungblad
Social Robotics + AI (ICSR 2025), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 484–499 2025
Sustainable Human-Robot Interaction: From Current Trends to Future Visions
Ilaria Torre, Maria Teresa Parreira, Hannah Pelikan, Erik Lagerstedt, Sarah Schömbs, Katie Winkle, Sara Ljungblad
Social Robotics + AI (ICSR 2025), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 484–499 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
"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
ERR@HRI 2.0 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot Conversations
Shiye Cao, Maia Stiber, Amama Mahmood, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju, Micol Spitale, Hatice Gunes, Chien-Ming Huang
Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia, pp. 14130–14135 2025
ERR@HRI 2.0 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot Conversations
Shiye Cao, Maia Stiber, Amama Mahmood, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju, Micol Spitale, Hatice Gunes, Chien-Ming Huang
Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia, pp. 14130–14135 2025
Co-Designing with Transformers: Unpacking the Complex Role of GenAI in Interactive System Design Education
Hauke Sandhaus, Qiuquan Gu, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS), pp. 1228–1243 2025
Co-Designing with Transformers: Unpacking the Complex Role of GenAI in Interactive System Design Education
Hauke Sandhaus, Qiuquan Gu, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS), pp. 1228–1243 2025
“I'm Done”: Describing Human Reactions to Successive Robot Failure
Shannon Liu, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 1458–1462 2025
“I'm Done”: Describing Human Reactions to Successive Robot Failure
Shannon Liu, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 1458–1462 2025
Sustainability-4-HRI, HRI-4-Sustainability
Ilaria Torre, Sarah Schömbs, Katie Winkle, Sara Ljungblad, Erik Lagerstedt, Maria Teresa Parreira, Hannah R. M. Pelikan
2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 1991–1993 (Workshop) 2025
Sustainability-4-HRI, HRI-4-Sustainability
Ilaria Torre, Sarah Schömbs, Katie Winkle, Sara Ljungblad, Erik Lagerstedt, Maria Teresa Parreira, Hannah R. M. Pelikan
2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 1991–1993 (Workshop) 2025
2024
ERR@HRI 2024 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot Interactions
Micol Spitale, Maria Teresa Parreira, Maia Stiber, Minja Axelsson, Neval Kara, Garima Kankariya, Chien-Ming Huang, Malte Jung, Wendy Ju, Hatice Gunes
Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI), pp. 652–656 2024
ERR@HRI 2024 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot Interactions
Micol Spitale, Maria Teresa Parreira, Maia Stiber, Minja Axelsson, Neval Kara, Garima Kankariya, Chien-Ming Huang, Malte Jung, Wendy Ju, Hatice Gunes
Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI), pp. 652–656 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
"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
HRI Wasn't Built in a Day: A Call to Action for Responsible HRI Research
Micol Spitale, Rebecca Stower, Maria Teresa Parreira, Elmira Yadollahi, Iolanda Leite, Hatice Gunes
2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), pp. 696–702 2024
HRI Wasn't Built in a Day: A Call to Action for Responsible HRI Research
Micol Spitale, Rebecca Stower, Maria Teresa Parreira, Elmira Yadollahi, Iolanda Leite, Hatice Gunes
2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), pp. 696–702 2024
Student Reflections on Self-Initiated GenAI Use in HCI Education
Hauke Sandhaus, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
CHI 2024 Workshop on LLMs as Research Tools: Applications and Evaluations in HCI Data Work (Workshop paper) 2024
Student Reflections on Self-Initiated GenAI Use in HCI Education
Hauke Sandhaus, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
CHI 2024 Workshop on LLMs as Research Tools: Applications and Evaluations in HCI Data Work (Workshop paper) 2024
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
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
CORAE: A Tool for Intuitive and Continuous Retrospective Evaluation of Interactions
Michael J. Sack, Maria Teresa Parreira, J. Fu, A. Lipman, Hifza Javed, Nawid Jamali, Malte Jung
2023 11th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) 2023
CORAE: A Tool for Intuitive and Continuous Retrospective Evaluation of Interactions
Michael J. Sack, Maria Teresa Parreira, J. Fu, A. Lipman, Hifza Javed, Nawid Jamali, Malte Jung
2023 11th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) 2023
What Could a Social Mediator Robot Do? Lessons from Real-World Mediation Scenarios
Thomas H. Weisswange, Hifza Javed, Manuel Dietrich, Tuan Vu Pham, Maria Teresa Parreira, Michael Sack, Nawid Jamali
2023 IEEE ICRA Workshop: Towards a Balanced Cyberphysical Society: A Focus on Group Social Dynamics, London 2023
What Could a Social Mediator Robot Do? Lessons from Real-World Mediation Scenarios
Thomas H. Weisswange, Hifza Javed, Manuel Dietrich, Tuan Vu Pham, Maria Teresa Parreira, Michael Sack, Nawid Jamali
2023 IEEE ICRA Workshop: Towards a Balanced Cyberphysical Society: A Focus on Group Social Dynamics, London 2023
"How Did They Come Across?" Lessons Learned from Continuous Affective Ratings
Maria Teresa Parreira, Michael J. Sack, Hifza Javed, Nawid Jamali, Malte Jung
2023 IEEE ICRA Workshop: Towards a Balanced Cyberphysical Society: A Focus on Group Social Dynamics, London 2023
"How Did They Come Across?" Lessons Learned from Continuous Affective Ratings
Maria Teresa Parreira, Michael J. Sack, Hifza Javed, Nawid Jamali, Malte Jung
2023 IEEE ICRA Workshop: Towards a Balanced Cyberphysical Society: A Focus on Group Social Dynamics, London 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
Understanding Bystander Facial Responses to Robot Task Failures with the BAD Dataset
Alexandra Bremers, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
HRI 2023 Workshop: The Imperfectly Relatable Robot: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Role of Failure in HRI, Stockholm (Position paper) 2023
Understanding Bystander Facial Responses to Robot Task Failures with the BAD Dataset
Alexandra Bremers, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
HRI 2023 Workshop: The Imperfectly Relatable Robot: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Role of Failure in HRI, Stockholm (Position paper) 2023
Using Social Cues to Recognize Task Failures for HRI: Overview, State-of-the-Art, and Future Directions
Alexandra Bremers, Alexandria Pabst, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.11972 2023
Using Social Cues to Recognize Task Failures for HRI: Overview, State-of-the-Art, and Future Directions
Alexandra Bremers, Alexandria Pabst, Maria Teresa Parreira, Wendy Ju
arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.11972 2023
2022
Design Implications for Effective Robot Gaze Behaviors in Multiparty Interactions
Maria Teresa Parreira, Sarah Gillet, Marynel Vázquez, Iolanda Leite
2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 976–980 2022
Design Implications for Effective Robot Gaze Behaviors in Multiparty Interactions
Maria Teresa Parreira, Sarah Gillet, Marynel Vázquez, Iolanda Leite
2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 976–980 2022
2021
A Single Stiffened Nucleus Alters Cell Dynamics and Coherence in a Monolayer
Maria Teresa Parreira, Kirill Lavrenyuk, João M. Sanches, Kris Noel Dahl
Cytoskeleton, 78(6), pp. 277–283 2021
A Single Stiffened Nucleus Alters Cell Dynamics and Coherence in a Monolayer
Maria Teresa Parreira, Kirill Lavrenyuk, João M. Sanches, Kris Noel Dahl
Cytoskeleton, 78(6), pp. 277–283 2021
Work/Research Experience & Education
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 -
Institute for Systems and Robotics (Lisboa, Portugal)Research Intern: machine learning for segmentation of MRI images in cases of MSMar. 2019 - Jul. 2019
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Institute for Systems and Robotics (Lisboa, Portugal)Research Intern, with Prof. Plínio Moreno: grasping motions for the Vizzy robotJan. 2017 - Jun. 2017
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Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon (Portugal)Teaching Assistant in HistologySep. 2016 - Feb. 2017
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
Teaching
- Fall 2025 Applied Machine Learning
- Spring 2025 Tech, Media and Democracy
- Spring 2024 Remaking the City
- Fall 2023 Interactive Device Design
Organizing Committees
- Mar 2026 Sustainability Chair, HRI 2026
- Jul 2025 Models of Human Feedback for AI Alignment workshop, ICML 2025
- Jun 2025 ERR@HRI 2.0 Challenge, ACM MM 2025
- Mar 2025 HRI-4-Sustainability, Sustainability-4-HRI workshop, HRI 2025
- Nov 2024 ERR@HRI Challenge, ICMI 2024
- 2023 - 2026 PACT committee (PhDs At Cornell Tech): Co-president (1/2023-1/2024), Social Chair (1/2024-1/2026)
- Oct 2023 Lead organizer, IS Retreat at Cornell University
Visits/Talks/Summer Schools
- 06/2023 MIRRORLab (remote) - "How can we (should we) become better roboticists? A Case Study on Unintended Biases in Robot Social Behavior"
- 05/2023 GAIPS (Lisboa) - "“How Did They Come Across?” Lessons Learned from Continuous Affective Ratings"
- 05/2023 ITI (Lisboa) - "“How Did They Come Across?” Lessons Learned from Continuous Affective Ratings"
- 06/2022 Attended RPL Summer School (Stockholm)
Reviews
- IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA), 2026
- Advanced Robotics, 2026
- ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025-26
- IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2025
- ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2022-26
- Late-Breaking Reports, ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2022-25
- ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 2024-25
- ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2024
- International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR), 2024
- Cognitive Systems Research, 2023
- International Journal of Social Robotics, 2022-25
Other Projects
- DFL - Bundesliga Data Shootout (Kaggle, 2022)
- Feature Extraction for Cell Mechanobiology analysis (Thesis work, 2020)
- EEG Pattern Mining (Course work, 2019)
- EMG for Robotic Platform Control (Course work, 2019)
- Human Protein Atlas Image Classification (Kaggle, 2018)
Press
- July/2026 Cornell Tech covers VLMs for Social Foresight
- May/2025 Cornell Chronicle covers Robotability project (also featured in ACM Tech News)
- Jul/2024 Participated and intervened at HLPF's Science Day, at the UN Headquarters
- Jun/2024 A great summary of our research on "Bad Robots" with Accenture, from an old collaborator
- Mar/2023 Master's thesis project featured in "revista Técnica", a publication journal for Instituto Superior Técnico
- Feb/2022 IEEE Portugal's Outstanding MSc Thesis Award
- Nov/2021 Honored with the Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo Award; Ceremony here (PT); Other Press
- Jun/2021 Another article about paper "A single stiffened nucleus alters cell dynamics and coherence in a monolayer"
- Jun/2021 Article about paper "A single stiffened nucleus alters cell dynamics and coherence in a monolayer"