Shiye (Sally) Cao
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the Johns Hopkins University, advised by Dr. Chien-Ming Huang and Dr. Anqi Liu. My research aims to develop social robots capable of providing long-term, personalized support for people. Toward this goal, I enhance the social capabilities of robots to more closely emulate natural human-human interactions and empower stakeholders (i.e., caregivers) to co-design personalized and meaningful interactions with AI. To evaluate the real-world effectiveness of social robots as long-term supports, I design, develop, and deploy social robots in the homes of preschool children to foster early language development. Through these long-term, in-home deployments, I investigate how robots can sustain engagement, personalize their behaviors, and integrate into family routines to meaningfully support early language development in children with diverse needs and capabilities.
My CV may be viewed here.
Updates
02.26 I am co-organizing the ERR@HRI 3.0 Challenge on Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot Conversations at ICMI 2026 in Naples, Italy.
Publications
- IDC’26ELLA: Generative AI-Powered Social Robots for Early Language Development at HomeAccepted to be presented at the 25th Interaction Design and Children Conference, 2026
- HRI’26Reframing Conversational Design in HRI: Deliberate Design with AI ScaffoldsProceedings of the 2026 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2026
- HRI’26Long-Term In-Home Robotic Support for Children with ASDCompanion of the 2026 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2026
- MM’25ERR@HRI 2.0 Challenge: Multimodal Detection of Errors and Failures in Human-Robot ConversationsProceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 2025
- RSS’25Interruption Handling for Conversational RobotsProceedings of the 2025 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, 2025
- CHI’25Voice Assistants for Health Self-Management: Designing for and with Older AdultsProceedings of 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025
- CSCW’24Designing for Appropriate Reliance: The Roles of AI Uncertainty Presentation, Initial User Decision, and User Demographics in AI-Assisted Decision-MakingProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2024
- CSCW’23How Time Pressure from Different Phases of Decision-Making Influences Human-AI CollaborationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2023
- ACM TiiSCrowdsourcing Thumbnail Captions: Data Collection and ValidationACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 2023
- HRI’23"What If It Is Wrong": Effects of Power Dynamics and Trust Repair Strategy on Trust and Compliance in HRIProceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2023
- CSCW’22Understanding User Reliance on AI in Assisted Decision-MakingProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2022
Services
Reviewer: THRI, HRI'26, CHI'26 (Outstanding Review), CSCW'25, HRI'25, CHI'25, HRI'24 (Outstanding Review), CSCW'24, CSCW'23
Organizer: ICMI'26 ERR@HRI3.0 Challenge, ACM-MM'25 ERR@HRI2.0 Challenge
Program Committee: NeurIPS'22 Gaze Meet ML Workshop
Student Volunteer: CSCW'23, CHI'23, HRI'23, CSCW'22
Member of JHU CS Department Student Council
Mentor for Women Mentoring Whiting, student group aimed to support female undergraduate computer science students
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant, EN.601.491/691 Human-Robot Interaction Spring 2026
Teaching Assistant, EN.601.490/690 Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction Fall 2022
Course Assistant, EN.601.475/675 Machine Learning Fall 2020, Spring 2021
Head Course Assistant, EN.601.475/675 Machine Learning Fall 2021