Developing multimodal AI and social robotics to foster empathetic, ethically-aligned, and natural interactions between humans and autonomous systems.

Angelica Lim is an associate professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Director of the ROSIE Lab (Robots with Social Intelligence and Empathy). Her research envisions an AI future where machines understand and adapt to the richness of human communication. She develops artificial intelligence models of nonverbal communication, including facial expressions, body gestures and speech prosody, to build empathic, context-aware and compassionate machines. Her work is grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration with psychologists, cognitive scientists, clinicians and neuroscientists, advancing responsible and human-centered robotics. Dr. Lim has been featured by the BBC, TEDx, and Forbes’ 20 Leading Women in AI, and she hosted a television documentary on robotics.