Frauke Zeller
frauke zeller

Dr Frauke Zeller

Professor

 0131 455 2372

  F.Zeller@napier.ac.uk

   

Biography

Dr. Frauke Zeller joined Edinburgh Napier University in 2023 as Professor of HCI & Creative Informatics in the School of Computing and Engineering & the Built Environment. Her research expertise spans several areas, such as methods for big data analyses in audience analytics, AI ethics and Human-Computer and -Robot Interaction. She received her Ph.D. (Dr. phil.) from Kassel University, Germany, in English Linguistics and Computational Philology. After that, she worked in the Institute of Media and Communication Studies at Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany. Frauke's Habilitation (highest academic degree in Germany) research project dealt with methods to analyze online communities. From 2011 to 2013 she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, funded by the European Commission, and was researcher in Canada as well as the UK (University College London). She was offered a tenure track assistant professorship at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2013, where she stayed until 2022. Frauke has been involved in multiple international research projects and was awarded a range of major research grants, among them a Tri-Council grant (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC), and has been co-applicant and collaborator in a project that develops AI-based social robots for pediatric pain management, funded by the new UK-Canada AI Research programme. Other projects are related to AI, such as developing higher education training courses in Responsible AI (funded by NSERC), analyzing social media content related to human rights issues and youth in Central America (RCYP), the development of AI-based technologies like chatbots for news media outlets and knowledge translation (SSHRC funded Partnership project, GJIL and XJO). Other projects were funded by the European Commission (Network of Excellence) or the German Research Foundation.
Frauke has been holding a range of research-related positions, such as director of the Centre for Communicating Knowledge, director of The Creative School Catalyst (a research catalyst and facilitator), she was DAAD Research Ambassador, and is still advisory council member of GAIN.
Frauke is also the co-creator of Canada’s first hitchhiking robot - hitchBOT. The project garnered broad public interest all around the world, and since then, she has been working on a range of human-robot interaction and AI-related projects.

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Member of Advisory Board of German Academic International Network
  • Steering Group & Working Group Chair: COST Action IS0906: Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies
  • Strategic Advisory Board Member: Integrated Project Digital Business Ecosystems (6th Framework Program).

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Knowledge Mobilization and Social Engagement Award at Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Top 30 Innovators Award from Silicon Valley Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum
  • Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Fellowship

 

Grant Funding Panel Member

  • Research Ambassador for German Academic Exchange Service

 

Invited Speaker

  • Humanities and Social Sciences in a BrAIve New World
  • A New Human-Robot Interaction Design and Evaluation Framework
  • The Role of Social Media in Human-Robot Interaction
  • Of Robots, Humans, and Communications: The Media and Communication Dimension in Human-Robot Interaction
  • The Audience Lab
  • Dimensions of Social Media in Human-Robot Interaction
  • In Search of the Perfect Robot Language: Towards a New Kind of Robot Science
  • The 3rd Workshop on Public Space Human-Robot Interaction (PubRob 2016)
  • hitchBOT at the Royal Canadian Institute of Science
  • The first hitchhiking robot - hitchBOT: Invited keynote at Social Media Week Hamburg
  • hitchBOT: Invited keynote at the Silicon Valley Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (SVIEF)

 

Media Activity

  • hitchBOT. The hitchhiking robot: Presentation at the world premiere of Roboticize Me
  • hitchBOT Media Coverage & Interviews

 

Non-executive Directorship

  • Director of The Creative School Catalyst
  • Director of Centre for Communicating Knowledge (The Creative School and ProCom)
  • Director of the Centre for Communicating Knowledge (CCK),
  • Programme Director of Explanatory Journalism Uptake and Impact project
  • Director of Audience Research Lab, The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University
  • Director of Audience Research Lab

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • Founding Member: Ryerson-wide 'AI & Data-Science Network (AIDa’s Network)'
  • Marie Curie Alumni Association - North America Chapter Management Team and Co-Ordinator of Canadian Sub Chapter

 

Visiting Positions

  • Visiting Scholar at Massey College
  • Invited Visiting Researcher Humboldt University, Berlin

 

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58 results

Perspectives of Healthcare Providers to Inform the Design of an AI-Enhanced Social Robot in the Pediatric Emergency Department

Journal Article
Hudson, S., Nishat, F., Stinson, J., Litwin, S., Zeller, F., Wiles, B., …Ali, S. (2023)
Perspectives of Healthcare Providers to Inform the Design of an AI-Enhanced Social Robot in the Pediatric Emergency Department. Children, 10(9), Article 1511. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10091511
Children commonly experience pain and distress in healthcare settings related to medical procedures such as blood tests and intravenous insertions (IVIs). Inadequately address...

Co-design of a Social Robot for Distraction in the Paediatric Emergency Department

Conference Proceeding
Foster, M. E., Candelaria, P., Dwyer, L. J., Hudson, S., Lindsay, A., Nishat, F., …Ali, S. (2023)
Co-design of a Social Robot for Distraction in the Paediatric Emergency Department. In HRI '23: Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (461-465). https://doi.org/10.1145/3568294.3580127
We are developing a social robot to help children cope with painful and distressing medical procedures in the hospital emergency department. This is a domain where a range of ...

Soziale Medien in der empirischen Forschung

Book Chapter
Zeller, F. (2023)
Soziale Medien in der empirischen Forschung. In J. Schmidt, & M. Taddicken (Eds.), Handbuch Soziale Medien (167-187). Wiesbaden: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25995-2_21
Der Beitrag bietet einen Überblick zu sozialen Medien in der empirischen Forschung mit einem methodologischen und instrumentellen Fokus. Er diskutiert die unterschiedlichen Me...

The Good, the Bad and the How-To of Analyzing Social Media Data

Book Chapter
Zeller, F. (2022)
The Good, the Bad and the How-To of Analyzing Social Media Data. In A. Quan-Hasse, & L. Sloan (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (363-381). (Second Edition). London: SAGE Publications

Editorial: Explanation in human-AI systems

Journal Article
Angelopoulou, A., Kapetanios, E., Smith, D. H., Steuber, V., Woll, B., & Zeller, F. (2022)
Editorial: Explanation in human-AI systems. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 5, Article 1048568. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.1048568
[Abstract unavailable.]

Systems of collaboration: challenges and solutions for interdisciplinary research in AI and social robotics

Journal Article
Zeller, F., & Dwyer, L. (2022)
Systems of collaboration: challenges and solutions for interdisciplinary research in AI and social robotics. Discover Artificial Intelligence, 2(1), Article 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-022-00027-3
This article examines the challenges and opportunities that arise when engaging with research across disciplines, contributing to the growth of social robotics and artificiall...

Algorithmic machines: From binary communication designs to human-robot interactions

Book Chapter
Zeller, F. (2021)
Algorithmic machines: From binary communication designs to human-robot interactions. In M. Taddicken, & C. Schumann (Eds.), Algorithms and Communication (95-132). Berlin: Digital Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.48541/dcr.v9.4
This article discusses aspects of future research in communication sciences related to a popular and omnipresent artefact of algorithmic machines, social robots. Social robots...

Ethical Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Robots in Children’s Healthcare Experiences

Conference Proceeding
Zeller, F., Petrick, R. P., Harris Smith, D., Stinson, J., Ellen Foster, M., & Ali, S. (2021)
Ethical Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Robots in Children’s Healthcare Experiences. In HRI 2021 Workshop on Measuring Child-Robot Relationships
This multi-disciplinary project aims to develop and evaluate an ethical, AI-enhanced, socially intelligent robot designed to alleviate children’s distress and pain in a clinic...

Mediated Participatory Urban Planning and Design: An Interdisciplinary Framework

Presentation / Conference
Zeller, F., Smith, D. H., Eyles, E., Eyles, J., Silva de Jesus, D., & Hillis, C. (2021, June)
Mediated Participatory Urban Planning and Design: An Interdisciplinary Framework. Paper presented at Urban Assemblage: The City as Architecture, Media, AI and Big Data, London, UK
This paper describes a theoretical, interdisciplinary framework for mediated participatory urban planning and design. More specifically, the framework aims to provide a theore...

Soziale Medien in der empirischen Forschung

Book Chapter
Zeller, F. (2020)
Soziale Medien in der empirischen Forschung. In J. Schmidt, & M. Taddicken (Eds.), Handbuch Soziale Medien (1-21). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-03895-3_21-2
Der Beitrag bietet einen Überblick zu sozialen Medien in der empirischen Forschung mit einem methodologischen und instrumentellen Fokus. Er diskutiert die unterschiedlichen Me...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • Collaborator: “Group singing to support social wellbeing and communication in adults with communication disorders”.
  • Co-Investigator: “CREATE in Responsible Development of AI (RAI)” project
  • Principal Investigator: “Social Impressions of Robots”
  • Co-Investigator and programme director: “Global Journalism Project”
  • Co-Investigator: “Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences”
  • Principal Investigator: “Negotiation and Gender Pay Parity: Exploring the Role of Mobile Tools for Learning and Practicing Negotiation”.
  • Collaborator: “Pepper/Watson for Healthcare”
  • Principal Investigator: "Social Robotics and AI for Healthcare Communication"
  • Principal Investigator: “Leveraging AI and Robotics for Healthcare”.
  • Principal Investigator: “Participatory Urban Planning”
  • Project Partner: Rights for Children and Youth Partnership
  • Co-Applicant: SSHRC Partnership Development Grant
  • Co-Author: Funding for Media Analysis Lab
  • Co-Author: Funding for Media Analysis Lab
  • Grant Proposal Input: “Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies”
  • Co-Author: Network of Excellence on Digital Ecosystems
  • Project Coordinator: Joint Master Program Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany
  • Co-Author: Grant funding for development of mobile technologies' usage in Higher Education teaching
  • Project Management: Neue Medien Universität at Kassel University, Germany
  • Funding for Computational Linguistics Lab

Current Post Grad projects