Cecilia G. Morales

Papers

Total Citations

119

H-Index

About

Cecilia G. Morales is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction and medical robotics, with a focus on how robots can navigate social challenges and perform life-saving procedures. Her most influential work, "Inducing Bystander Interventions During Robot Abuse with Social Mechanisms" (86 citations), fundamentally explores how robots can leverage social influence to motivate humans to defend them from mistreatment—a critical contribution to robot ethics and social dynamics. In "Interaction Needs and Opportunities for Failing Robots" (22 citations), she investigates human reactions to real-world robot failures, shaping how we design more resilient and socially-aware machines. More recently, Morales has advanced medical robotics with "Reslicing Ultrasound Images for Data Augmentation and Vessel Reconstruction" (9 citations) and "Bifurcation Identification for Ultrasound-driven Robotic Cannulation" (2 citations), developing AI-driven techniques for autonomous vascular access in trauma care. Her work bridges social robotics and clinical applications, demonstrating how robots can both understand human behavior and deliver urgent medical interventions when skilled personnel are unavailable. Morales’s research is shaping the future of socially intelligent and medically capable autonomous systems.