Catherine Pelachaud facts for kids
Catherine Pelachaud is a brilliant French computer scientist. She is famous for her work on how computers and people interact, especially with virtual assistants. Imagine talking to a computer character that understands your feelings! Catherine Pelachaud helps make that happen by teaching computers to recognize and create facial expressions. She works as a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which is a big science organization in France. She is part of a research center called the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR), which works with Sorbonne University.
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Becoming a Computer Scientist
Catherine Pelachaud studied computer graphics at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. degree in 1991. After that, she continued her research at the University of Pennsylvania and also at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy.
Teaching and Research Roles
In 2002, Catherine Pelachaud became a professor at the University Institute of Technology of the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. This was a big step in her career. Later, in 2008, she became a research director for CNRS. She first worked at a lab called Information Processing and Communication Laboratory (LTCI) at Télécom Paris. In 2016, she moved to the ISIR research center, where she continues her amazing work today.
Awards and Honors
Catherine Pelachaud has received important awards for her contributions to computer science.
ACM/SIGAI Award
In 2015, she won the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award. This award recognized her "sustained and substantial contributions" to the field of intelligent virtual agents. This means her work has greatly helped create smart computer characters that can act on their own.
Honorary Doctorate
The University of Geneva in Switzerland honored Catherine Pelachaud in 2016. They gave her an honorary doctorate, which is a special degree given to people who have made outstanding achievements. This shows how much her work is valued around the world.
