Elisabeth André facts for kids

Elisabeth André is a smart German computer scientist. She works on making computers easier and more fun to use. She also helps create virtual characters and studies how people interact with technology.

Learning and Degrees

Elisabeth André studied Computer Science at the University of Saarland in Germany. She earned her first degree, called a diploma, in 1988. Later, in 1995, she earned her PhD. A PhD is a very advanced degree. It means she became an expert in her field.

Her Work and Career

After finishing her studies, Elisabeth André started working at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. She was a researcher there from 1988 to 2001. During this time, she moved up to become a senior researcher in 1995 and then a principal researcher in 1999.

Since 2001, she has been a Computer Science professor at the University of Augsburg. She also helped start and lead the Human-Centered Multimedia group there. From 2004 to 2006, she was the Managing Director for the Institute of Computer Science at the same university.

Elisabeth André has also been a representative for the German Research Foundation. This group helps fund important research in areas like Artificial Intelligence. She has also been part of a review board for this foundation since 2008. She has also helped organize many big conferences about how people use computers.

What She Studies

Elisabeth André is very interested in how people and computers can work together better. Her research looks at several cool areas:

• Affective Computing: This is about making computers understand human emotions.
• Embodied Conversational Agents: These are like virtual characters or robots that can talk and interact with people.
• Multimodal Human-Machine Interaction: This means studying how we can use different ways to talk to computers, like using our voice, gestures, or even facial expressions.
• Social Signal Processing: This involves teaching computers to understand social cues, like body language or tone of voice.

Awards and Recognitions

Elisabeth André has received many awards for her important work:

• 1995—She won the European Information Technology Information Award.
• 1998—She received the RoboCup Scientific Award.
• 2000—She won a Best Paper Award at a conference about Intelligent User Interfaces.
• 2005—She received the Convivio Best Demo Award for her work on People-Centered Agent Technologies.
• 2007—She was given the Alcatel-Lucent Fellowship.
• 2007, 2008, 2009—Her papers were finalists for the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents for three years in a row.
• 2010—She was chosen to be a member of the Academia Europaea, which is a group of top scientists and scholars.
• 2017—She was elected to the CHI Academy, a special honor for leaders in human-computer interaction.