Franziska Babel

Background

About Franziska Babel

I am an Assistant Professor for Cognitive Science at the Department of Computer and Information Science at Linköping University in Sweden. I am passionate about understanding how and why people behave with automated thechnology (e.g, robots, cars, AI agents) the way they do and how we can make these interaction as intuitive, acceptable and trustworthy as possible. My curiosity and perseverance are my main motivators to conduct applied research in HRI, HCI, HAI and XAI. I was a post-doc at the Department of Computer and Information Science at Linköping University in Sweden from April '23 to June '25 and worked on HRI research topics surrounding autonomous shuttle busses, delivery robots and social robots in lab and real-world settings. I was a PhD student at the Department of Human Factors at Ulm University in Germany. In my thesis, I investigated psychological conflict resolution strategies in human-robot interaction. Before my PhD, I graduated with a Master of Science in Psychology from Ulm University with a grade of 1.2. During my studies, I was a statistics tutor and gained first experience with courses and students. During my Master's, I did a six-month internship at Volvo Trucks in Gothenburg, Sweden. I was able to get to know the (corporate) culture in another country and, together with my mentor, dealt with the issues of truck driver coaching and psychological models of behavioural change. I consider my greatest strengths to be my curiosity, ambition, and persistence in problem-solving, which is also evident in my love for data analysis and scientific writing.