18 Facts About Cynthia Breazeal

Cynthia Breazeal is an American AI and robotics scientist and entrepreneur.

Cynthia Breazeal is a pioneer of social robotics and human-robot interaction.

Cynthia Breazeal is the former chief scientist and chief experience officer of Jibo, a company she co-founded in 2012 that developed companion robots for the family at home.

Cynthia Breazeal's work has explored the theme of living everyday life in the presence of AI and, in recent years, has been a leader in AI literacy for youth.

Kismet, as well as other robots Cynthia Breazeal co-developed while a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, has been on display in the MIT Museum since 2000.

Cynthia Breazeal is a professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group.

Cynthia Breazeal serves on multiple editorial boards and committees for autonomous robots.

Cynthia Breazeal did early explorations of social embodiment on robotic telepresence and has investigated long-term interaction with robots, such as the impact of rapport-building on human outcomes in domains like health, wellness, and education.

In sum Cynthia Breazeal has centered her work around the concept of "living with AI," the impact of incorporating social robots into our everyday lives.

In January 2022, Cynthia Breazeal was named as dean for digital learning at MIT, where she leads MIT Open Learning's revenue-generating professional education and research portfolio, identifying the areas for technical and pedagogical innovation, while researching how different methods and technologies can improve digital learning.

Cynthia Breazeal has been part of creating a robotic flower garden installation, Cyberflora, which was exhibited at the 2003 National Design Triennial at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Cynthia Breazeal's group has explored expressive remote presence robots such as MeBot, whose physical social embodiment was found to elicit greater psychological involvement, engagement, and desire to cooperate over purely screen-based video conferencing or a mobile screen.

In recent years Cynthia Breazeal's work has expanded into AI and education.

Cynthia Breazeal has emphasized RAISE's ambition to innovate and advance at scale, to educate primary through high school-aged students in the creative and ethical use of AI, and do so in part with free resources for use in the classroom and teacher professional development.

On July 16,2014, Cynthia Breazeal launched a successful Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund the development of Jibo, a personal assistant robot widely marketed as the world's first family robot.

Cynthia Breazeal served as chief scientist and chief experience officer.

Cynthia Breazeal failed to raise series B funding, and in March 2020, the assets of Jibo Inc were acquired by NTT Corporation for healthcare and education markets.

Cynthia Breazeal has shown that the role of the robot as a collaborative, emotionally engaging partner can enhance children's creative story-making, enrich parent-child interactions around educational stories and games, serve as a positive psychology coach to improve mental wellness even during the COVID-19 pandemic, and act as a social catalyst to promote social interaction among residents in senior communities.