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About

Laura Hoffmann is a prominent researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction (HRI), social robotics, and cognitive neuroscience. Her scholarship has significantly advanced our understanding of how humans emotionally and psychologically respond to robots, as well as how robotic systems can be purposefully designed to support human learning and well-being. Hoffmann's early contributions explored the emotional and empathic dimensions of human-robot interaction. Her experimental and neuroimaging studies — including fMRI investigations into empathy toward robots (156 and 29 citations) — revealed that humans activate similar neural pathways when observing robots being treated harshly as they do with humans, a finding with profound implications for robot design and ethics. Her most-cited work, an experimental study on emotional reactions toward robots (308 citations), established a foundational empirical basis for the field. Beyond affective responses, Hoffmann has shaped the practical deployment of social robots as educational tools, developing guidelines for robot-assisted second language tutoring (160 citations) and investigating scaffolding techniques for children's language learning. Her theoretical contributions, including the EmCorp-Scale framework for measuring embodiment, and her research on robot touch and persuasion, further demonstrate a researcher consistently pushing the boundaries of how we conceive human-machine relationships.