Alexis E. Block is currently an assistant professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department at Case Western Reserve University. She is the first full faculty hire in the interdisciplinary Human-Fusions Institute. She directs the SaPHaRI (Social and Physical Human-Robot Interaction) Lab, which focuses on interactions with applications to mental health and emotional support, as well as emotion regulation and overall well-being.

Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Biomechatronics Lab at UCLA, where she was supervised by Veronica Santos. She was awarded a two-year NSF/CRA/CCC funded Computing Innovation (CI) Fellowship to support her research at UCLA. She earned her Dr. sc. in Computer Science from ETH Zurich in 2021 as part of the Center for Learning Systems, a joint program between the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH Zurich. She was supervised by Otmar Hilliges (ETH), Roger Gassert (ETH), and Katherine Kuchenbecker (MPI). Upon graduation, she was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal for outstanding scientific achievement by a junior scientist. During her Ph.D. she was selected as a 2018 HRI Pioneer, and won the Best Hands-on Demonstration at EuroHaptics 2022. She earned her B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (with honors) and her M.S.E. in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2017, respectively, while working in the Haptics Lab in GRASP. She was honored with the Penn Alumni Association Student Award of Merit at graduation, she received an Honorable Mention for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Her research blends physical human-robot interaction, social robotics, and haptics. Her work with HuggieBot, the robot she designed to hug people as part of her Masters thesis while still at Penn, has garnered significant media attention in 2018, including news articles by The New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, TechXplore, The Times, NBC News, Entrepreneur.com, and many more. HuggieBot has been mentioned and Alexis has been interviewed on several radio programs including NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, “The Paul Ross Show on Talk Radio,” and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “The Current.” Seth Meyers joked about HuggieBot during his opening late-night monologue on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and NowThis Media’s video about HuggieBot has more than 500,000 views!