Professor Thusha Rajendran will look retrospectively through his research career at what technologies – from text chat to touchscreens, virtual environments and robots – reveal about ourselves. He will consider ways in which his current research and future directions might inform what kind of society we want – to allow us to make informed decisions about our priorities and values while we continue to integrate artificial agents and autonomous systems into our lives.

Thusha’s lecture will include the ways in which technologically-based measures have revealed abilities and differences rather than disabilities; the importance of interdisciplinary research in answering questions and reflecting back to your own discipline, and the power of child development in guiding research in social and developmental robotics.