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Biography

Dr. Sahba Zojaji, holding a master's degree in artificial intelligence and robotics and a PhD in Computer Science, has dedicated his career to bridging the gap between engineering and social sciences. With about 10 years of industry experience, he is passionate about advancing technology in the service of humanity. Dr. Zojaji's global perspective is enriched by his experiences living and working in various countries from East to West, making him well-versed in multiple cultures and languages. Prior to his current role, he contributed to various large multinational projects, such as the JST Moonshot R&D program in Japan (~$1 billion) and several European Union projects like MSCA-ITN ANIMATAS (~$4 million), DAISI (~$1 million), and NARECA (~$0.7 million). 


Dr. Zojaji's research focuses on understanding and modeling human-agent interactions within social contexts, exploring individual and group dynamics, cultural nuances, emotions, and personality traits to enable socially aware robots, virtual characters, and AI algorithms. He is passionate about applying these advancements to healthcare, preventive health, and education, aiming to revolutionize patient care, promote healthier lifestyles, and enhance learning experiences. Combining theoretical insights with real-world pragmatism from his extensive industry experience as a software engineer, Dr. Zojaji strives to advance human-technology interactions for societal benefit.

Awards and honors
  • 2024
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  • 01

    2024

    Serving as a panelist and keynote speaker, representing KTH-Royal Institute of Technology at the Science Today: 'Man and Machine' panel discussion hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum.

  • 02

    2024

    Visiting Scholar at Intelligent User Interface Lab, Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan

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Publications

For an accurate and up-to-date list of my publications, including links to papers, please visit my profile on Google Scholar.

2024

S. Zojaji, A. Matviienko, I. Leite, and C. Peters. 2024. “Join Me Here if You Will: Investigating Embodiment and Politeness Behaviors When Joining Small Groups of Humans, Robots, and Virtual Characters.” In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 595, 1–16.
2024
  • S. Zojaji, A. Matviienko, and C. Peters. 2024. “Exploring the Influence of Co-Present and Remote Robots on Persuasiveness and Perception of Politeness.” In Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1204–1208.
2024
  • S. Zojaji. 2024. “Embodying Politeness in Persuasive Humanoid Agents for Small Group Scenarios.” PhD Thesis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. ISBN: 978-91-8040-833-2.
2023
  • S. Zojaji, A. B. Latupeirissa, I. Leite, R. Bresin, and C. Peters. 2023. “Persuasive Polite Robots in Free-Standing Conversational Groups.” In 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Detroit, MI, USA, 2023, pp. 4006-4013.
2023
  • S. Zojaji, A. Steed, and C. Peters. 2023. “Impact of Immersiveness on Persuasiveness, Politeness, and Social Adherence in Human-Agent Interactions within Small Groups.” In ICAT-EGVE 2023 – International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, The Eurographics Association.
2023
  • S. Zojaji, A. Červeň, and C. Peters. 2023. “Impact of Multimodal Communication on Persuasiveness and Perceived Politeness of Virtual Agents in Small Groups.” In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 18, 1–8.
2022
  • M. Elgarf, S. Zojaji, G. Skantze, and C. Peters. 2022. “CreativeBot: a Creative Storyteller robot to stimulate creativity in children.” In Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 540–548.
2022
  • A. Iop, S. Zojaji, and C. Peters. 2022. “Don’t walk between us: adherence to social conventions when joining a small conversational group of agents.” In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 6, 1–8.
2021
  • F. Yang, Y. Gao, R. Ma, S. Zojaji, G. Castellano, and C. Peters. 2021. “A dataset of human and robot approach behaviors into small free-standing conversational groups.” PLOS ONE 16, 2 (February 2021), 1–24.
2020
  • S. Zojaji, C. Peters, and C. Pelachaud. 2020. “Influence of virtual agent politeness behaviors on how users join small conversational groups.” In Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 59, 1–8.
2019
  • S. Zojaji and C. Peters. 2019. “Towards Virtual Agents for Supporting Appropriate Small Group Behaviors in Educational Contexts.” In 2019 11th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games), 1–2.
2017
  • O. Șerban, M. Barange, S. Zojaji, A. Pauchet, A. Richard, and E. Chanoni. 2017. “Interactive narration with a child: impact of prosody and facial expressions.” In Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 23–31.
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