Dr Chaona Chen
School of Computer Science
Lecturer in Robotics
chaona.chen@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 1812
+44 114 222 1812
Regent Court (DCS)
Full contact details
Dr Chaona Chen
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
- Profile
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Dr. Chaona Chen is currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Robotics at the School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield. Before joining the University of Sheffield, she worked as a Research Fellow in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, where she was awarded the prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2021-2024). She also held a postdoctoral position on a European Research Council-funded project (FaceSyntax, 2017-2021). She obtained her Ph.D. and B.Sc. degrees from University of Glasgow, UK and Wuhan University, China, respectively.
- Research interests
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Her research focuses on understanding human social communication and applying this knowledge to the development of human-centred artificial intelligence and social robots. Specifically, Dr. Chen's interests include:
- Computational Modelling of Social Signals: Investigating how humans communicate with one another by mathematically modelling social signals, such as facial expressions, gaze, and body movements.
- Impact of Social and Cultural Conventions: Exploring how social and cultural conventions, as well as individual characteristics, influence the adaptation of human communicative behaviours, including cultural adaptation and social learning.
- Development of Human-Centred AI and Social Robots: Creating human-centred artificial intelligence and social robots to support the learning and training of social communication skills, particularly in contexts related to social anxiety and mental health.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Cultural facial expressions dynamically convey emotion category and intensity information. Current Biology, 34(1), 213-223.e5.
- Testing, explaining, and exploring models of facial expressions of emotions. Science Advances, 9(6).
- Facial expressions elicit multiplexed perceptions of emotion categories and dimensions. Current Biology, 32(1), 200-209.e6.
- Distinct facial expressions represent pain and pleasure across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(43).
- Discovering cultural differences (and similarities) in facial expressions of emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 61-66.
- Space-by-time manifold representation of dynamic facial expressions for emotion categorization. Journal of Vision, 16(8), 14-14.
- The Face is the Mirror of the Cultural Mind. Journal of Vision, 15(12), 928-928.
Conference proceedings papers
- Robot self-recognition via facial expression sensorimotor learning. 2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Vol. 29 (pp 2591-2597), 28 August 2023 - 31 August 2023.
- Modelling Culturally Diverse Smiles Using Data-Driven Methods. 2023 IEEE 17th International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), Vol. 3 (pp 1-4), 5 January 2023 - 8 January 2023.
- Dynamic Face Movement Texture Enhances the Perceived Realism of Facial Expressions of Emotion. Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (pp 1-3)
- Building Culturally-Valid Dynamic Facial Expressions for a Conversational Virtual Agent Using Human Perception. Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Vol. 62 (pp 1-3)
- Building a Generative Space of Facial Expressions of Emotions Using Psychological Data-driven Methods. Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (pp 1-3)
- Equipping social robots with culturally-sensitive facial expressions of emotion using data-driven methods. 2019 14th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition (FG 2019), 14 May 2019 - 18 May 2019.
- Reverse Engineering Psychologically Valid Facial Expressions of Emotion into Social Robots. 2018 13th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition (FG 2018), Vol. 109 (pp 448-452), 15 May 2018 - 19 May 2018.
Preprints
- The Brain Computes Dynamic Facial Movements for Emotion Categorization Using a Third Pathway, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
- Culturally diverse facial expression signals diminish the precision of emotion communication across cultures, Research Square Platform LLC.
- Cultural facial expressions dynamically convey emotion category and intensity information. Current Biology, 34(1), 213-223.e5.
- Research group