Since January 2026, I am a Research Scientist in Artificial Social Cognition, affiliated to the Spanish National Centre for Scientific Research (CSIC). I co-lead the interdisciplinary SocialMinds research lab at the Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (IIIA), where we investigate Artificial Social Cognition, applying machine learning to social robots.

From September 2021 to December 2025, I was Senior Scientist in charge of Social AI and Interactions at PAL Robotics, a Barcelona-based company. I supervised a team of researchers and engineers who developed the tools and open-source technology to enable frictionless interactions between humans and social robots like PAL’s ARI and TIAGo Pro.

From April 2018 to July 2021, I was Associate Professor in Social Robotics and AI (until Dec 2019, Senior Research Fellow) at the Bristol Robotics Lab, UK, working and co-supervising the Human-Robot Interaction theme. My main research interests include the data-driven study of human social behaviours, cognitive architectures for autonomous social robots, and the general study of the psychological and social underpinnings of the interaction between humans and robots.

Previously, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellow at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom, in the robotic group headed by Tony Belpaeme. I worked on the cognitive concept of Theory of Mind applied to robots, and how this may improve and enrich human-robot interaction.

From March 2013 to July 2015, I’ve been a post-doctoral fellow at the EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, in the Computer-Human Interaction for Laerning and Instruction (CHILI lab). I was in charge of coordinating the robotic group and developing research in robotic-based learning technologies.

I was previously post-doctoral fellow at the LAAS-CNRS research institute, in the Robotics and Interactions group, working on the “upper cognition” of robots (knowledge management, dialogue, theory of mind…).

I’ve defended my PhD thesis in July 2012. I prepared it at LAAS-CNRS, in joint supervision with the TU Muenchen. I’ve been awarded the Best PhD in Robotics 2012 prize by the French CNRS for this work.

Before, I’ve been working for a year as engineer in mobile robotics at the INRIA national institute for computing sciences.

I hold a joint MSc in mechanical engineering from France (Diplôme d’ingénieur Arts et Métiers ParisTech) and Germany (Dipl. Ing. in Maschinenbau, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).

I hold as well a MSc in Computer Sciences applied to Education from Université Paris 5.