Martina Mara gratuated in Communication studies at the University of Vienna and earned her doctorate in Psychology at the University of Koblenz-Landau with a dissertation on the user acceptance of anthropomorphic machines. After having worked for non-university research institutions such as the Ars Electronica Futurelab and the Institute of Design Research Vienna for more than a decade, she became Professor of Robopsychology at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in April 2018. Her current research interests include public attitudes towards robotics and AI, psychological effects of simulated human-likeness and intention signaling of mobile and collaborative robots. Mara is a member of the Austrian Council for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, and a board member of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society. She is a newspaper columnist who writes for a wide audience, regularly commenting on what is going on in the world of technology. In 2018, she received the BAWAG Women’s Prize and the Futurezone Award in the category “Women in Tech.”

Credit: Philipp Greindl 2019