Rate My Professor Pamela Carreno-Medrano

Dr. Pamela Carreno-Medrano is a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at Monash University, where she joined in 2020 as a Research Fellow and advanced to Lecturer in 2023. She also serves as Adjunct Lecturer at Universidad EAFIT in Colombia since 2021 and as the Early Career Research Representative for her department. Previously, she held a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at the University of Waterloo in Canada from 2017 to 2019, focusing on human-robot collaboration. Carreno-Medrano obtained her PhD in Sciences and Technologies of Information and Communication from Université de Bretagne-Sud in France in 2016, with a thesis titled Analysis and Synthesis of Expressive Theatrical Movements. She earned a Master of Science in Computer Science from École Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Brest in 2012 and a Bachelor in Computer Systems Engineering from Universidad EAFIT in 2010.

Her research lies at the intersection of human-robot interaction, human-centred and embodied AI, and human-centred design, developing autonomous agents for short- and long-term human interactions. Specific interests include long-term adaptive human-robot interaction, aligning human-robot task representations, modeling non-goal-driven human behaviors, socially aware robot navigation, and socially assistive robotics for physical wellbeing. She leads projects such as Natural Interaction Strategies for Long-Term Robot Use for Elderly Care (Primary Chief Investigator, 2025-2028) and serves as Chief Investigator on ARC-funded initiatives like Human models for accelerated robot learning and human-robot interaction (2024-2027) and the ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing (2023-2028). Key publications encompass Contingent autonomy: Robotic encounters in an uncertain world (2026, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space); chapters in Experimental Methodology for Human–Robot Interaction (2025) on advanced statistical analysis methods, ethical HRI research frameworks, challenges in HRI experiments, and developing research questions and hypotheses; Joint estimation of expertise and reward preferences from human demonstrations; Use of Socially Assistive Robots in Physiotherapy: Scoping Review (2025); and Contextual Affordances for Safe Exploration in Robotic Scenarios (2024). Carreno-Medrano actively recruits Masters and PhD students in human-robot interaction, interactive robot learning, and human-behaviour modelling.