Brian Scassellati is a professor of computer science, cognitive science, and mechanical engineering at Yale University and director of the NSF Expedition on Socially Assistive Robotics. His research focuses on building embodied computational models of human social behavior, especially the developmental progression of early social skills. Using computational modeling and socially interactive robots, his research evaluates models of how infants acquire social skills and assists in the diagnosis and quantification of disorders of social development. His other interests include humanoid robots, human-robot interaction, artificial intelligence, machine perception, and social learning.
Scassellati’s research in social robotics and assistive robotics has been recognized within the robotics community, the cognitive science community, and the broader scientific community. He was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2007 and received an NSF CAREER award in 2003; his work has been highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Popular Science.