As founder, CEO and chief designer of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, Dr. Hanson leads a world-class team of roboticists, AI experts, scientists, technologists, hardware/software engineers and cognitive specialists. His company has produced many one-of-a-kind robot characters known for remarkable expressiveness, aesthetics, and interactivity. Dr. Hanson publishes regularly in materials science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and robotics journals, including SPIE, IEEE, The International Journal of Cognitive Science, IROS, AAAI and AI magazine. He has also been featured in numerous popular media outlets including the New York Times, Popular Science, Scientific American, the BBC and CNN. Called a “genius” by both PC Magazine and WIRED, he has earned awards from NASA, NSF, AAAI, Tech Titans’ Innovator of the Year, and the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. Before founding Hanson Robotics, Dr. Hanson worked as both a sculptor and technical consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering. He received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in film/animation/video, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in interactive arts and engineering.

Dr. Hanson has spoken at venues including IEEE, SPIE, AAAI, DARPA, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown, Google, Sandia Labs, UCSD and AAAS annual meeting. Delightfully interacting with Sophia and his other humanoid creations, he shares a vision of a fast-arriving future in which emotionally-connected robots are not only a part of our everyday lives and businesses, but may actually reinvent what it means to be human. Read Less ^