News

Prof. Nejat will give an invited talk entitled "Intelligent, Emotional and Persuasive Social Robot Behaviors for HRI in Healthcare and Beyond," at the 2025 IEEE IROS workshop: Augmentative Human-Robot Interaction: From Human Augmentation to Human-Inspired Collaboration on the 24th of October, 2025:

Robots are moving into spaces once thought to be exclusively human, and in healthcare, that shift is opening up urgent and exciting possibilities.

The session Social Robots in Health on October 8, 2025, with Goldie Nejat and Maja Mataric in conversation and Michael Jenkin and Amy Wu co-chairing, explored how socially assistive robots are stepping into roles that support both physical rehabilitation and mental health. These technologies promise to bridge critical gaps in care, offering timely and personalized support.

The discussion moved beyond the technical to tackle questions of trust, empowerment, and interdisciplinary collaboration. It focused not on distant futures but on what’s unfolding right now, challenging us to think critically about how we build technologies that care.

Prof. Nejat will give the invited keynote talk entitled "Paging All Socially Assistive Robots: Persuasive And Intelligent Social Robots for Healthcare And Everyday Assistance."

Prof. Nejat has been invited to present an Extraordinary Women in IEEE IES webinar. Her talk on June 7, 2024 is entitled "Intelligent social robots living among us and providing care as we age."

More info at:

An NSERC Alliance International - Catalyst Grant has been awarded to Prof. Goldie Nejat. This grant aims to develop a deep understanding of the causes of the diffusion of robotics and AI in the health system and analyze their impacts on productivity and performance to ensure the beneficial development and adoption of robotics and AI technologies. Prof. Nejat is collaborating with Prof. Geuna from the University of Torino on this exciting project.

For more info:

On Nov. 8th from 6:00 to 7:30 pm Prof. Nejat will join a panel to provide tips for getting into and thriving in grad-level robotics research. This event is hosted by the Ontario Chapter of Women in Robotics.

Women-in-IES Committee first online forum in 2023
Panel Discussion with a Question-and-Answer period
Topic: Who are WiE and how can WiE support your career goals/plans through our shared experiences
Time:  May 5th, 2023 (8am PDT, 11am EDT, 12pm ADT, 5pm CEST, and 11pm Beijing time)
Zoom Access: ID: 879 5634 7857; Passcode: 589391
To register: Click this google form send us questions you would like to ask the Panel

Our ASBLab hosted MPP Daisy Wai on March 30th! MPP Wai meet with our socially assistive robots to learn all about their capabilities and how they can help seniors:

Professor Nejat was featured in a Global News article entitled: Conversations with Alexa: How robots are helping Canada’s aging population connect

She discussed the socially assistive robots being developed in the ASBLab and how they can help our older population.