Leila Takayama

Leila Takayama has a long and distinguished career in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Leila began their career in 2003 as a PhD candidate at Stanford University. In 2005, they became a Research Assistant at PARC. Leila then moved to Nokia in 2008 as a Research Scientist in Human-Computer Interaction. In 2009, they joined Willow Garage as a Research Scientist and Manager for Human-Robot Interaction. Leila then moved to Google in 2013 as a Senior User Experience Researcher. In 2011, they became a Global Agenda Council member at the World Economic Forum. In 2016, they were an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an HRI Consultant at Hoku Labs. In 2018, they joined Oceankind as an HRI Consultant, where they identified opportunities to make technologies more useful and usable for marine conservation end-users and bridged gaps between conservation, science, and technology communities to develop marine conservation projects. In 2021, they became the VP of Design and HRI at Robust.AI.

Leila Takayama received a BAs in Cognitive Science & Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, followed by a PhD in Communication from Stanford University in 2008. In 2019, they obtained a certification in Group 1: Human Subjects Researchers-Social, Behavioral, and Economic from the CITI Program. In 2021, they obtained a certification in Research with Children from the CITI Program.