Dr. Cynthia Breazeal is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab. She has authored the book “Designing Sociable Robots”, has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences on the topics of autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence, human robot interaction, and robot learning.
Dr. Breazeal is a recipient of the National Academy of Engineering’s Gilbreth Lecture Award, Technology Review’s TR35 Award, and TIME magazine’s Best Inventions of 2008. She has also been awarded an ONR Young Investigator Award, and was honored as finalist in the National Design Awards in Communication.
She received her S.B. (1989) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She did her graduate work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and received her SM (1993) and ScD (2000) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cynthia grew up playing every sport she could. She was a competitive athlete from grade school through high school, with an emphasis on track, soccer and finally tennis.
