Maha Ahmed Kamal Elgarf

I am currently a first year PhD student at the Computational Science and Technology Department (CST) at KTH working with Dr. Christopher Peters  at the Embodied Social Agents Lab (ESAL) . 

My research is part of the ANIMATAS project which is a H2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie European Training Network funded by Horizon 2020. 

In my PhD, I investigate the impacts of self-other similarity on the communication process between humans and embodied social agents (virtual characters and robots). I focus in my research on assessment these impacts in pedagogical contexts. 

My previous research focused on the use of technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities or developmental / mental disorders. Research projects that I have worked on have targeted visually impaired people as well as autistic children.

My research interests include: human computer interaction, affective computing, virtual characters, social computing, human robot interaction, social robotics, psychology and education.

Short CV

I had both my bachelor and master's degrees in Digital Media Engineering and Technology from the German University in Cairo (GUC) in 2010 and 2015 respectively. In 2014, I went on a DAAD scholarship to perform my master's thesis project at the Human Centered Multimedia (HCM) lab, university of Augsburg, Germany.