Heather Knight Biography

Heather Knight is a post-doc at Stanford University and adjunct computer science professor at Oregon State University. She also runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theatre company featuring comedy performances by Data the Robot, and an annual Robot Film Festival. Her research interests include human-robot interaction, non-verbal machine communications and non-anthropomorphic social robots. She completed her PhD in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, was named to the 2011 Forbes List for 30 under 30 in Science, and is featured on TED.com for her robot comedy performances.

A PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, Heather Knight combines her passion for robotics and entertainment in an effort to spark interest in science and technology. Her research involves human-robot interaction, non-verbal machine communications and non-anthropomorphic social robots. She was named to the 2011 Forbes List for 30 under 30 in Science and is featured for her robot comedy performances on TED.

“Robot and human actors will perform the same script and basic set of actions, but each time, vary the emotional and social content of those interactions. This variation allows the general public to craft and hone robot personalities.” – Heather Knight

Her work also includes robotics and instrumentation at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, interactive installations with Syyn Labs (including the award winning "This too shall pass" Rube Goldberg Machine music video with OK GO), field applications and sensor design at Aldebaran Robotics. She is an alumnus from the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab and earned her bachelor and master’s degrees at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Mechanical Engineering. Her installations have been featured at the Smithsonian-Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, LACMA, SIGGRAPH, PopTech and the Fortezza da Basso in Florence, Italy.

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