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

  • Dimensions of Social Media in Human-Robot Interaction
  • Humanities and Social Sciences in a BrAIve New World
  • The Role of Social Media in Human-Robot Interaction
  • A New Human-Robot Interaction Design and Evaluation Framework
  • The Audience Lab
  • Of Robots, Humans, and Communications: The Media and Communication Dimension 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
  • Programme Director of Explanatory Journalism Uptake and Impact project
  • Director of Centre for Communicating Knowledge (The Creative School and ProCom)
  • Director of the Centre for Communicating Knowledge (CCK),
  • 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

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

 

Filter by

Date


58 results

Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences

Conference Proceeding
Ellen Foster, M., Ali, S., Litwin, S., Parker, J., Petrick, R. P. A., Harris Smith, D., …Zeller, F. (2020)
Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences. In A. R. Wagner, D. Feil-Seifer, K. S. Haring, S. Rossi, T. Williams, H. He, & S. Sam Ge (Eds.), Social Robotics: 12th International Conference, ICSR 2020, Golden, CO, USA, November 14–18, 2020, Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62056-1_45
This paper describes a new research project that aims to develop an autonomous and responsive social robot designed to help children cope with painful procedures in hospital e...

New Research Avenues in Human-Robot Interaction

Book Chapter
Zeller, F. (2020)
New Research Avenues in Human-Robot Interaction. In D. Zhang, & B. Wei (Eds.), Human–Robot Interaction: Control, Analysis, and Design (75-92). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Killing Robots

Exhibition / Performance
Blanchet, L. Killing Robots. [Theatre]. 2019 - 2020. (Unpublished)

)
Blanchet, L. Killing Robots. [Theatre]. 2019 - 2020. (Unpublished
HitchBot est un robot auto-stoppeur créé par un laboratoire canadien en 2014, pour étudier les interactions entre les hommes et les machines. Il a la taille d’un enfant de six...

How do we feel when a robot dies? Emotions expressed on Twitter before and after hitchBOT's destruction

Conference Proceeding
Fraser, K. C., Zeller, F., Smith, D. H., Mohammad, S. M., & Rudzicz, F. (2019)
How do we feel when a robot dies? Emotions expressed on Twitter before and after hitchBOT's destruction. In Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment and Social Media Analysis, (62-71). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/W19-1308
In 2014, a chatty but immobile robot called hitchBOT set out to hitchhike across Canada. It similarly made its way across Germany and the Netherlands, and had begun a trip acr...

Social Media in Human-Robot Interaction

Journal Article
Zeller, F., Smith, D. H., Duong, J. A., & Mager, A. (2020)
Social Media in Human-Robot Interaction. International Journal of Social Robotics, 12, 389-402. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00573-4
The objective of this paper is to discuss and demonstrate in a case study the application of social media as a tool for acceptance, sociability and interaction in human-robot ...

hitchBOT Permanent Exhibition

Exhibition / Performance
Harris Smith, D., & Zeller, F. hitchBOT Permanent Exhibition. [Mixed]. Exhibited at Paderborn, Germany. 2018. (Unpublished)

)
Harris Smith, D., & Zeller, F. hitchBOT Permanent Exhibition. [Mixed]. Exhibited at Paderborn, Germany. 2018. (Unpublished

hitchBOT: The Risks and Rewards of a Hitchhiking Robot

Journal Article
Smith, D. H., & Zeller, F. (2018)
hitchBOT: The Risks and Rewards of a Hitchhiking Robot. Suomen Antropologi, 42(3), 63-65

Virtual Worlds for Facilitating Urban Development Dialogue

Conference Proceeding
Harris Smith, D., Zeller, F., Eyles, J., Silva de Jesus, D., Dwyer, L., & Eyles, E. (2017)
Virtual Worlds for Facilitating Urban Development Dialogue. In J. P. Bowen, G. Diprose, & N. Lambert (Eds.), EVA '17: Proceedings of the conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (109-111). https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.25

Tracking the imagined audience: A case study on Nike’s use of Twitter for B2C interaction

Journal Article
Au Duong, J., & Zeller, F. (2017)
Tracking the imagined audience: A case study on Nike’s use of Twitter for B2C interaction. First Monday, 22(5), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i5.6607
Social media platforms have become the new centre of attention in business-to-consumer (B2C) communication. These interactions provide a rich source of information for busines...

The Death and Lives of hitchBOT: The Design and Implementation of a Hitchhiking Robot

Journal Article
Smith, D. H., & Zeller, F. (2017)
The Death and Lives of hitchBOT: The Design and Implementation of a Hitchhiking Robot. Leonardo, 50(1), 77-78. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01354
In the early morning hours of 1 August 2015, as it waited for its next ride on a Philly park bench, unknown assailants destroyed hitchBOT. Arms torn from its body, legs broken...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • Co-Investigator: “CREATE in Responsible Development of AI (RAI)” project
  • Collaborator: “Group singing to support social wellbeing and communication in adults with communication disorders”.
  • 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”.
  • Principal Investigator: "Social Robotics and AI for Healthcare Communication"
  • Principal Investigator: “Leveraging AI and Robotics for Healthcare”.
  • Principal Investigator: “Participatory Urban Planning”
  • Collaborator: “Pepper/Watson for Healthcare”
  • 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