Kerstin Dautenhahn is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She is a Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics and is cross-appointed to the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, and the Department of Systems Design Engineering at University of Waterloo. At Waterloo she is the Director of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory (SIRRL)). The main areas of her research are Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics, Assistive Technology, Developmental Robotics and Health Technologies. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), Fellow of the IEEE, member of ACM, and a Lifelong Fellow of AISB. Since 2006 she has been part of the Standing Steering Committee of the IEEE conference RO-MAN (Human and Robot Interactive Communication).

Kerstin Fischer is professor for Language and Technology Interaction at the University of Southern Denmark and director of the Human-Robot Interaction Lab in Sonderborg. She has written 3 monographs, 32 journal articles and more than 100 conference and book contributions and is well-anchored to the Human-Robot Interaction scientific community, for instance, as senior associate editor of the journal Transactions in Human-Robot Interaction, as member of the steering committee of the Human-Robot Interaction conference, as Theory & Methods Theme Chair and as Alt.HRI co-chair. Her research focuses on understanding how robots become social actors in interaction.

David J. Gunkel (PhD Philosophy) is an award-winning educator, researcher, and author, specializing in the philosophy of technology with a focus on the moral and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and robots. He is the author of over 115 scholarly articles and has published eighteen books, including Thinking Otherwise: Philosophy, Communication, Technology (Purdue University Press 2007), The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012), Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix (MIT Press 2016), Robot Rights (MIT Press 2018), Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21^st Century and Beyond (MIT Press 2023), and Handbook on the Ethics of AI (Edward Elgar 2024). He currently holds the position of Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University (USA) and professor of applied ethics at Łazarski University in Warsaw, Poland.

Hiroshi Ishiguro is Professor at the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, holding the title of Distinguished Professor of Osaka University, Japan. He leads the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR). Prof. Ishiguro has authored over 300 papers in prominent journals and conferences, on distributed sensor systems, interactive robotics, and android science, and received numerous research awards. Prof. Ishiguro's pioneering and philosophical approach to robotics has captivated major media outlets, including the Discovery Channel, NHK, and BBC. His work involves the creation of humanoid robots and androids, such as Robovie, Repliee, Telenoid, Elfoid, and the renowned Geminoids, which are physical replicas of real people. Through these creations, Prof. Ishiguro explores the future of human-robot interactions.

JeeLoo Liu, PhD. is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, and Executive director of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy. She was named 2019 Carnegie Fellow for her research project: Confucian Robotic Ethics. She has authored Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality (Wiley-Blackwell 2017), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: from Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism (Blackwell 2006). She also co-edited Consciousness and the Self (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (Routledge 2014). Her primary research interests include philosophy of mind, metaphysics, Chinese metaphysics, Confucian moral psychology, Neo-Confucianism, Confucian moral sentimentalism, and more recently, Confucian robot ethics, as well as the question of whether social robots without phenomenal consciousness could be morally competent.

Robert Sparrow is a professor in the philosophy program, a chief investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, and an adjunct professor in the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, where he works on ethical issues raised by advances in science and technology, from artificial intelligence to genetic engineering. His work addresses the often uncomfortable real-world ethical implications of adopting new technologies and discusses issues of consent, social justice, and democracy. His publications on political philosophy, bioethics, environmental ethics, media ethics; just war theory; and the ethics of science and technology are research contribution that also engage public and political debate on these controversial topics.