Katherine Isbister
Katherine Isbister is a full Professor of Computational Media and Jack Baskin Endowed Chair in Engineering at University of California Santa Cruz, where she directs the Social Emotional Technology Lab.
Her research team creates interactive experiences at the intersection of HCI and Games/Play to heighten social and emotional connections and wellbeing, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications. Their research-through-design practice often includes elements of games and play.
She was the founding Research Director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU’s School of Engineering.
She has worked in research labs internationally as well as in software start-ups and design consultancies (past clients include Microsoft, Paramount, BMW, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and others), in addition to being a research professor. She is also the author of several books: Better Game Characters by Design, Game Usability, and most recently, How Games Move Us.
Isbister is a recipient of MIT Technology Review’s Young Innovator Award, and is an ACM Distinguished Scientist.
Laurence Devillers
Laurence Devillers is a full Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Ethics at Sorbonne University and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS-LISN, Paris-Saclay). She is the head of the AI HUMAAINE (HUman-MAchine Affective Interaction & Ethics) chair at CNRS, where she also leads heads the “Affective and social dimension in spoken interaction” team.
Laurence Devillers’ research interests include emotion detection in audio, nudge strategies, conversational agents and social robots.
She is a member of the National Pilot Committee for Digital Ethics, co-leader of the report on Ethical Issues of Conversational Agents (2021) and on the Generative AI Systems: Ethical Issues (2023). She is also a member of AFNOR and JTC21/CEN-CENELEC, and heads a working group on “Foundational and societal aspects of AI”.
She is also President of the Blaise Pascal Foundation on mediation in mathematics and computer science. She has written several essays, including “Des robots et des hommes” (Plon 2017) and “Les robots émotionnels” (L’observatoire, 2020).