Sam Spaulding

Graduate Researcher or Doctoral Student @ Personal Robots Group, MIT Media Lab

Sam Spaulding is a doctoral student in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. With teams at Yale University, Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, and Jibo Inc., he has helped develop some of the world's most advanced interactive social robots, capable of perceiving, understanding, and adapting to human emotions. His research has been presented at numerous international conferences and has been recognized by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Human-Robot Interaction Pioneers award, and research grants from the Mellon Fund and Sigma Xi scientific society. Outside of robotics, he is an unrepentant trivia nerd and has appeared on Jeopardy! and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, and likes to spend his free time reading, doing fun physical activities, playing board games, and making lists.