Dr. Emily C. Collins is an interdisciplinary HRI researcher in the Department of Computer Science, at the University of Manchester, UK. She holds a Philosophy BA Honours degree from Cardiff University, UK. Before retraining as a scientist, Dr. Collins worked in the international cultural and heritage sector, in Kenya, and then Japan. She was awarded a distinction in her Master Of Science degree in Experimental Psychology in 2012 from Sussex University, UK. In 2017, Dr. Collins received her PhD in psychology and social robotics from Sheffield Robotics at The University Of Sheffield, UK, entitled ‘Towards Robot-Assisted Therapy: Identifying Mechanisms of Effect in Human-Biomimetic Robot Interaction.’ She spent a portion of her PhD at Osaka University, Japan, translating psychology metrics from English into Japanese to conduct cross-cultural HRI research. After one year as a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Research Fellow at Sheffield Robotics, Dr. Collins moved to the University of Liverpool to begin work as an HRI specialist for an EPSRC-funded UK-wide Research Hub tackling Verifiable Autonomous Robotics and AI for Extreme and Hazardous Environments, in particular for the nuclear and off-shore oil industries (a.k.a. the RAIN and ORCA Projects respectively). At Liverpool she also worked at the Home Robot Lab for the Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology, where she developed robot demos for home robot activity. Dr. Collins continues to work as a Post Doctoral Researcher, and HRI specialist at Manchester, collaborating with colleagues across the Faculty of Science and Engineering on numerous projects, including work on Robotics and AI for Nuclear industries (RAIN).

Her research interests include biomimetic and brain-based robotics, industrial robotics and risk mitigation, animal and robot-assisted therapy, human-robot interaction, and the ethics of robotics and AI.