Dr. Frauke Zeller

Biography

Professor Frauke Zeller holds the Chair in Design Informatics at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, where she co-directs the Institute for Design Informatics. Her expertise spans Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Machine Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, and ethics related to digital methods. Following her move to Scotland in 2023, she previously served as an Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada, where she held various research-related roles including director of the Centre for Communicating Knowledge and the Creative School Catalyst. Professor Zeller has been actively involved in numerous international research projects, securing a variety of major grants including Tri-Council funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a project examining AI-based social robots in pediatric pain management. Her work also extends to developing higher education training courses in Responsible AI and analyzing human rights issues impacting youth in Central America. Additionally, she contributed to the development of AI-based technologies such as chatbots for news media knowledge translation. Zeller's projects have received funding from the European Commission and the German Research Foundation, and she has been involved in the AHRC-funded cluster for Creative Informatics. Among her notable achievements, she co-created Canada’s hitchhiking robot, hitchBOT, which gained substantial global attention, transforming into an artistic piece that is now part of a permanent museum exhibition.

Research Interests

Experience