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About

Katelyn Swift-Spong is a leading researcher in socially assistive robotics (SAR), focusing on human-robot interaction for health, education, and social well-being. Her work spans child nutrition education, post-stroke rehabilitation, intergenerational family bonding, and adolescent exercise motivation. She pioneered the use of SAR to deliver personalized, longitudinal interventions, as demonstrated in her highly cited study "How to train your DragonBot" (124 citations), which showed that ethnically diverse first-graders sustained high enjoyment learning about healthy food choices with a robot over six sessions. Her research on comparative feedback in post-stroke rehabilitation (50 citations) revealed how robot-delivered self-comparative feedback can enhance self-efficacy in reaching tasks, advancing rehabilitation robotics. Swift-Spong also explored intergenerational dynamics, designing robot interactions to improve older adults' social well-being within family groups (40 citations), and investigated robot backstories to engage overweight adolescents in exercise (14 citations). Her work uniquely combines rigorous experimental design with real-world deployment across diverse populations, from children to stroke survivors to families. By demonstrating that robots can serve as effective, autonomous coaches and companions, Swift-Spong has shaped the field of SAR, earning recognition for her contributions to personalized, socially engaging robotic systems that improve human health and learning outcomes.