Deutsch Intern
Media Informatics

Prof. Dr. Birgit Lugrin

Research Profil:
Birgit Lugrin's research is interdisciplinary and focuses on the implementation of intelligent interactive systems. Since these are designed for intuitive use by human users, she combines methods and knowledge from human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, psychology and cognitive science.
She is particularly passionate about research on intelligent virtual agents and social robots. She further explores intelligent environments for assisted living and mobile applications for education. Following the principle "Designing for Diversity", these are tailored to the needs and abilities of different user groups.
The application of her research topics, such as pedagogical agents to support lifelong learning, the integration of cultural behaviours in virtual worlds, or the potential of the use of social robots in elderly care are of high social relevance in the ongoing technological change.
Birgit Lugrin is one of the editors of ACM’s "The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents”, a large collection of surveys that introduce, summarize, and discuss the last 20 years of research in the domains of embodied conversational agents, intelligent virtual agents, and social robotics.

Short Bio:
Birgit Lugrin holds the professorship for Computer Science (Media Informatics) at the Chair of Computer Science IX (Human-Computer Interaction) at the Institute of Computer Science since 2015, and heads the Media Informatics group.
Prior to this she was at the University of Augsburg where she wrote her doctoral thesis on "Cultural Diversity for Virtual Characters" and subsequently worked as a faculty member. Birgit Lugrin holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in computer science.

Awards:

  • Best Paper Award, International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 2022 (David Obremski, Helene Hering, Paula Friedrich, Birgit Lugrin. Exploratory Study on the Perception of Intelligent Virtual Agents with Non-Native Accents using Synthetic and Natural Speech in German)
  • Best Presentation Award, International Conference on Persuasive Technologies 2020 (Andrea Deublein, Birgit Lugrin. (Expressive) Social Robot or Tablet? – On the Benefits of Embodiment and Non-verbal Expressivity of the Interface for a Smart Environment)
  • Best Paper Finalist, International Conference on Social Robotics 2017 (Hendrik Striepe, Birgit Lugrin. There once was a Robot Storyteller: Measuring the Effects of Emotion and non-verbal Behaviour)
  • Best Late Breaking Report Nomination, International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction 2017 (Stephan Hammer, Elisabeth Andre, Kim Kirchner, Birgit Lugrin. Touch or Talk? - Comparing Social Robots and Tablet PCs for an Elderly Assistant Recommender System)
  • Best Paper Award, International Conference on Culture and Computing 2015 (Birgit Lugrin, Julian Frommel and Elisabeth André. Modeling and Evaluating a Bayesian Network of Culture-Dependent Behaviors)
  • IFAAMAS-12 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award
  • Research Award of Augsburg University (best Dissertation in 2012)
  • PhD grant from the Elite Network Bavaria

Links: 

Current activities in the scientific community:

Contact Details

Prof. Dr. Birgit Lugrin
Medieninformatik / Informatik 9
Universität Würzburg
Am Hubland (Campus Süd) 
D-97074 Würzburg, Germany

E-Mail: birgit.lugrin@uni-wuerzburg.de
Tel: +49 931 31-84602

Room: B110, Building M2
Consultation-Hour: by appointment