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About

Malte Jung is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, team dynamics, and social robotics, whose work has fundamentally reshaped how we understand robots as social actors within groups. Rather than studying isolated human-robot dyads in controlled laboratory settings, Jung has championed the study of robots embedded in real-world team contexts — a perspective articulated in his influential "Robots in the Wild" (2018, 228 citations) and "Robots in Groups and Teams" (2020, 142 citations). His most-cited work, "Towards a Theory of Longitudinal Trust Calibration in Human–Robot Teams" (2019, 399 citations), has become a cornerstone reference for researchers examining how trust develops over time between humans and robots. Jung's contributions extend beyond observation: he has demonstrated that robots can actively shape team outcomes by moderating conflict, expressing vulnerability to build interpersonal trust, and influencing conversational dynamics among humans — not just between humans and robots. His concept of "affective grounding" (2017, 135 citations) introduced a vital new dimension to interaction theory. With over 1,700 cumulative citations across his top works, Jung's research offers both theoretical depth and practical design implications for deploying social robots in collaborative human environments.