Ana Paiva
Ana Paiva develops agents and robots that can cooperate with people. Her research connects social interaction, education and prosocial computing. Paiva completed doctoral study in artificial intelligence in education at Lancaster University from 1992 to 1996. Her earlier degrees were in electrical and computer engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico. This training combined technical systems with questions about how people learn. She worked as a WASP guest professor in Sweden from 2022 to 2024, collaborating with teams in social AI, robotics and autonomous agents. She also served as Portugal’s Secretary of State for Science in 2024.
- Works
- 571
- Citations
- 12,879
- h-index
- 55
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1992–1996
Studying AI in education
Paiva completed doctoral study in artificial intelligence in education at Lancaster University from 1992 to 1996. Her earlier degrees were in electrical and computer engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico. This training combined technical systems with questions about how people learn.
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2000
Building a social-AI group
She founded GAIPS, the Group on AI for People and Society, in 2000. She led the group for twenty years. Its research concerned autonomous agents and robots that could interact and collaborate with humans.
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2018
Recognition for prosocial computing
Paiva’s work in prosocial computing received the AAAI Blue Sky Paper Award in 2018. The field connects computational systems with behavior that supports other people. Her wider research program includes social AI, robotics and autonomous agents.
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2022–2024
Research collaboration and public service
She worked as a WASP guest professor in Sweden from 2022 to 2024, collaborating with teams in social AI, robotics and autonomous agents. She also served as Portugal’s Secretary of State for Science in 2024.
Sources and credits
Photo: Alípio Padilha, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
