Melissa Donnermann
Details:
Dr. rer. nat. Melissa Donnermann completed her doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in 2026 with her dissertation entitled “Social Robots in Higher Education: Introducing an Adaptive Robotic Tutor for Long-term Interaction.”
Melissa completed her bachelor's and master's degrees in Media Communication, specializing in Media Informatics. She began working as a tutor in Media Informatics in 2016 and as a doctoral researcher in 2019. Since then, she has gained extensive research experience in social robots in higher education, focusing on adaptivity and long-term studies. Over several semesters, she established the “Tutoring with Pepper” project, a unique real-world application of a social robot as an autonomous tutor for university students, accompanying the “Media Informatics 1 and 2” lectures.
Building on her extensive experience in designing and conducting field studies with social robots, Melissa is increasingly focusing on how human-robot interactions can be made more inclusive and user-centered. Her current research focuses on diversity in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and adapting robot behavior to different users, for example, based on gender, culture, age, and personality.
Research areas:
- Social Robots in Education
- Social Robots and Diversity
- Long-term Studies with Social Robots
- Field Studies with Social Robots
Teaching:
- Übungen zur Medieninformatik 1/2
- Forschungsprojekt - Soziale Roboter in Hotels
- Forschungsprojekt - Technologiegestütztes Lernen mit sozialen Robotern
- Forschungsprojekt - Social Robots & Culture
- Forschungsthemen - SIAs for Good
- Konzeption, Analyse und Produktion von Medien - Soziale Roboter
- Multimedia Applications - Master MK
- Forschungsprojekt B - Master PdM
- Multimodale intelligente Systeme - Master PdM
Links:
Contact Details
Melissa Donnermann
Chair for Computer Science V
Socially Interactive Agents
Universität Würzburg
Am Hubland (Campus Süd)
D-97074 Würzburg, Germany
E-Mail: melissa.donnermann@uni-wuerzburg.de
Tel: +49 931 31 83462
Room: B107 , Building M2
Consultation-Hour: by appointment
