PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hatice Gunes

Also known as Hatice Güneş

Hatice Gunes is a Turkish computer scientist at the University of Cambridge whose AFAR Lab studies social and affective intelligence for AI systems and robots. After a 2007 doctorate at the University of Technology Sydney on reading affect from the face and body, she joined Imperial College London in 2008 and helped build the SEMAINE project's SAL system, a real-time dialogue system that talks with people through a virtual character. Queen Mary University of London hired her as a lecturer in 2011; she moved to Cambridge in 2016 and became President of the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing in 2017. With a five-year EPSRC Fellowship from 2019, her lab studied robot coaches for mindfulness, and in 2022 it used a Nao robot to assess children's mental wellbeing. She is a Full Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics, directs the AFAR Lab and is an Associate Director of Cambridge's Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence.

Timeline

  1. By 2007

    A doctorate in Sydney

    A Turkish computer scientist, she studies as an undergraduate at Yıldız Technical University and earns a PhD in computer science at the University of Technology Sydney on an Australian Government International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. Her 2007 thesis analyzes affective face and upper-body behaviour, and she builds the FABO bimodal face and body gesture database.

  2. 2008–2011

    SEMAINE at Imperial College

    She moves to Imperial College London in 2008 to work with Maja Pantić in the Intelligent Behaviour Understanding Group (iBUG). As a postdoctoral researcher on the EU SEMAINE project, she helps build the SAL system, a real-time dialogue system that talks with people through a virtual character; the project wins the Best Demo Award at IEEE ACII'09 and the Best Paper Award at IEEE FG'11.

  3. 2011–2015

    Lecturer at Queen Mary

    Queen Mary University of London hires her in 2011 as a lecturer in its School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, and she becomes an associate professor there in 2014. With Evangelos Sariyanidi and Andrea Cavallaro, she publishes a 2015 survey of automatic facial affect analysis in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

  4. 2016–2017

    Cambridge and an AAAC presidency

    She joins the University of Cambridge's Department of Computer Science and Technology in 2016. The Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing names her its President in 2017.

  5. 2019–2021

    Robot coaches for wellbeing

    A five-year EPSRC Fellowship on robotic emotional intelligence for wellbeing begins in 2019, and she serves as a Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute from 2019 to 2021. As a Reader in Affective Intelligence and Robotics in May 2021, she leads studies in which a Pepper robot, teleoperated by a human coach, delivers weekly mindfulness sessions.

  6. 2022

    Robots that assess children's wellbeing

    In June 2022, she speaks at the Royal Institution on artificial social intelligence and emotionally intelligent machines. Working with Cambridge's Department of Psychiatry, her team has a Nao humanoid robot assess the mental wellbeing of 28 children aged 8 to 13, and presents the results at IEEE RO-MAN in Naples in September 2022.

  7. 2023–2024

    Wellbeing awards and a Sony shortlist

    Her team's work taking robotic wellbeing coaches from the lab into the workplace wins the Better Future Award at the department's Hall of Fame Awards in 2023 and is runner-up for the Collaboration Award at Cambridge's Vice-Chancellor's Awards for Research Impact and Engagement. In November 2024, she is named to the shortlist for the inaugural Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and AFAR Lab director

    She is a Full Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics at Cambridge, where her AFAR Lab studies social and affective intelligence for AI systems and robots, and an Associate Director of the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence. Her group's CHANSE project (2025–2028) studies social robots for assessing child mental health. In February 2026, she gives an ELLIS Distinguished Lecture on fairness in affective and wellbeing computing at the University of Oulu.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hatice Gunes yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Hatice Gunes - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Prof Hatice Gunes | Department of Computer Science and Technology cst.cam.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Can machines be emotionally intelligent? - with Hatice Gunes | Royal Institution rigb.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Wellbeing on demand | University of Cambridge cam.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. The robots assessing children’s mental wellbeing | Department of Computer Science and Technology cst.cam.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Fellow shortlisted for Women in Technology Award - Trinity Hall Cambridge trinhall.cam.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. ELLIS Distinguished Lecture: Hatice Gunes | ELLIS Institute Finland ellisinstitute.fi. Checked 19 October 2026.