# Topics > Entities > Personalities >  Cynthia Breazeal

## Airicist

Associate Director of MIT Media Lab

Founder and director of Personal Robots Group

Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Jibo, Inc.

cynthiabreazeal.media.mit.edu

facebook.com/cynthia.breazeal.3

twitter.com/cynthiabreazeal

linkedin.com/in/cynthia-breazeal-1792317

Cynthia Breazeal on Wikipedia

Projects:

Jibo, social robot

Leonardo, mini humanoid robot

Project "Socially Assistive Robotics: An NSF Expedition in Computing"

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## Airicist

Cynthia Breazeal: The rise of personal robots 

 Uploaded on Dec 4, 2009




> Dr. Cynthia Breazeal is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab. Cynthia discussed the work that she and her team are currently engaged in at MIT. Beginning with what inspired her as a little girl to go on and study robotics — C3PO and R2D2 in Star Wars — Cynthia summed up robotics as the expression of a drive towards human self-understanding that spans philosophy, science, and even performance art.

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## Airicist

ROBOTS14 - Cynthia Breazeal 

Published on Jun 24, 2014

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## Airicist

These robots want to be your friend

Published on Apr 13, 2015




> Social robots designed to mimic and elicit human emotion get a lot of love at SXSW.
> Read more here:
> "Robots need to make us happy and know when we're sad"
> 
> by Terrence O'Brien
> March 14, 2015

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## Airicist

Dr. Cynthia Breazeal: "The Personal Side of Robots"

Published on Mar 15, 2015




> Dr. Cynthia Breazeal is founder and CEO of Jibo, Inc. She is also an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the Personal Robots Group. Breazeal is recognized as a prominent innovator at the intersection of technology and society as the pioneer of Social Robotics. Her research spans both the creation of intelligent and socially responsive robots, as well as studying their impact on contributing to people’s quality of life across education & learning, creativity, health, telecommunications, aging, entertainment, play, and more. Jibo, Inc. brings the technologies, design insights, and user experience of social robots to the home as the world’s first family robot. As an open platform, Jibo enables 3rd party developers to bring the engagement and emotional lift of social robots to their apps and services.
> 
> The ability of autonomous robots to interact and work effectively with people is increasingly important: from improving worker productivity with robot teammates, to enhancing people’s quality of life with personal robots. Social robots interact with people in an interpersonal way to support the socio-affective dimension of human experience. This, in turn, impacts human behavior, attitudes and performance in intriguing ways. Such findings encourage us to think quite differently about robots, beyond performing physical tasks, to empowering us on a deeper human level: to learn better, to stay healthier, to care for and connect with one another with greater engagement, and more. The benefits of social robots could be transformative in areas of significant societal need that demand critical innovation. Nonetheless, this also motivates a thoughtful dialog about the desired role of intelligent, emotive technology in our lives, our relationship with it, and possible consequences.

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## Airicist

Artificial Intelligence: education and personalized learning

Published on Jan 10, 2017

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## Airicist

Living, learning and creating with social robots

Published on Jun 25, 2018




> Social robots are designed to interact with people in an interpersonal way, engaging and supporting collaborative social and emotive behavior for beneficial outcomes.  In a time where citizens are beginning to live with intelligent machines in a daily basis, we have the opportunity to explore, develop and assess humanistic design principles to support and promote human flourishing at all ages and stages. In this talk, I highlight a number research projects where we are developing, fielding, and assessing social robots over repeated encounters with people in real-world environments such as the home, schools, or hospitals. We develop adaptive algorithmic capabilities for robots to support sustained interpersonal engagement and personalization to support specific interventions. We then examine the impact of the robot’s social embodiment, non-verbal and emotive expression, and personalization capabilities on sustaining people's engagement, improving learning, impacting behavior, and shaping attitudes — in comparison to other personal technologies. I will highlight some provocative findings for a 1-month, cross-generational, in-home study comparing a smart speaker to a social robot covering engagement, usage and desired roles. Finally, it is imperative that the general public understand AI and are empowered to create with AI. I will describe ongoing work with preK-middle school AI education with toolkits that enable kids to code, train, and interact with AI on projects of personal interest. Only when AI is democratized so that everyday people are empowered to design solutions with AI, will AI truly benefit all.

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## Airicist

Article "Cynthia Breazeal named Media Lab associate director"
Expert in personal social robots will work with lab faculty and researchers to develop strategic research initiatives, and to explore new funding mechanisms.

by MIT Media Lab
June 19, 2020

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