1.Educational Background (in reverse chronological order)：

• 2018-2024: KTH–Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Computer Science, Doctoral Degree.
• 2008-2011: Iran University of Science and Technology, Iran, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Master of Science. 

2.Work Experience (in reverse chronological order)：

• 2025 – Present: Shenzhen Loop Area Institute (SLAI), Shenzhen, China, Assistant Professor.
• 2024 – Present: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China, Assistant Professor.
• 2024 – 2024: Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan, Postdoctoral Researcher.
• 2018 – 2024: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, PhD Researcher.
• 2016 – 2018: INSA of Rouen Normandy, Rouen, France, Research Engineer.
• 2011 – 2016: Behsazan Mellat, Tehran, Iran, Software Designer and Architect.

Sahba Zojaji is jointly appointed Assistant Professor at Shenzhen Loop Area Institute and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and serves as faculty member at the Consortium of AI for Psychology. Since December 2024 he directs the AHA Lab. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from KTH-Royal Institute of Technology in 2024. His work has contributed to Japan’s $1 billion JST Moonshot R&D program and to EU projects MSCA-ITN ANIMATAS (~$4 million), DAISI (~$1 million), and NARECA (~$0.7 million), with results published at leading venues such as CHI, IROS, and HRI. With more than ten years of multinational academic and industry experience across East and West, his research focuses on understanding and modeling human-agent interactions within social contexts, exploring individual and group dynamics, cultural nuances, emotions, and personality traits to enable socially aware robots, virtual characters, and AI algorithms for healthcare and education.

1. Representative Publications (past 5-10 years, in order of impact)：

S. Zojaji, A. Matviienko, I. Leite, and C. Peters. 2024. “Join Me Here if You Will: Investigating Embodiment and Politeness Behaviors When Joining Small Groups of Humans, Robots, and Virtual Characters.” In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 595, 1–16.

S. Zojaji, Y. I. Nakano, and C. Peters. 2025. “Impact of Cultural Differences and Politeness on Joining Groups of Humans, Robots, and Virtual Characters.” In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '25). IEEE Press, 479–488.

S. Zojaji, A. B. Latupeirissa, I. Leite, R. Bresin, and C. Peters. 2023. “Persuasive Polite Robots in Free-Standing Conversational Groups.” In 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Detroit, MI, USA, 2023, pp. 4006-4013.

S. Zojaji, A. Červeň, and C. Peters. 2023. “Impact of Multimodal Communication on Persuasiveness and Perceived Politeness of Virtual Agents in Small Groups.” In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 18, 1–8.

S. Zojaji, C. Peters, and C. Pelachaud. 2020. “Influence of virtual agent politeness behaviors on how users join small conversational groups.” In Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 59, 1–8.

M. Elgarf, S. Zojaji, G. Skantze, and C. Peters. 2022. “CreativeBot: a Creative Storyteller robot to stimulate creativity in children.” In Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 540–548.

S. Zojaji, J. Schiött, W. Ivegren, A. Matviienko, and C. Peters. 2025. “Influence of Floor Type on Social Navigation with Small Free-Standing Groups in Virtual Reality.” In: Chen, J.Y.C., Fragomeni, G. (eds) Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. HCII 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15789. Springer, Cham.

A. Iop, S. Zojaji, and C. Peters. 2022. “Don’t walk between us: adherence to social conventions when joining a small conversational group of agents.” In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 6, 1–8.

E. Pascoe, C. Peters, and S. Zojaji. 2025. “Human Obedience and Social Norm Adherence in Small Groups with Virtual Agents.” In: Chen, J.Y.C., Fragomeni, G. (eds) Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. HCII 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15789. Springer, Cham.

K. Inoue, S. Okada, D. Lala, S. Zojaji, N. F. Chen, and T. Kawahara. 2025. "CCMI 2025: Cross-Cultural Multimodal Interaction." In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 808–810.

S. Zojaji, A. Matviienko, and C. Peters. 2024. “Exploring the Influence of Co-Present and Remote Robots on Persuasiveness and Perception of Politeness.” In Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1204–1208.

S. Zojaji, A. Steed, and C. Peters. 2023. “Impact of Immersiveness on Persuasiveness, Politeness, and Social Adherence in Human-Agent Interactions within Small Groups.” In ICAT-EGVE 2023 – International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, The Eurographics Association.

F. Yang, Y. Gao, R. Ma, S. Zojaji, G. Castellano, and C. Peters. 2021. “A dataset of human and robot approach behaviors into small free-standing conversational groups.” PLOS ONE 16, 2 (February 2021), 1–24.

O. Șerban, M. Barange, S. Zojaji, A. Pauchet, A. Richard, and E. Chanoni. 2017. “Interactive narration with a child: impact of prosody and facial expressions.” In Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 23–31.

S. Zojaji and C. Peters. 2019. “Towards Virtual Agents for Supporting Appropriate Small Group Behaviors in Educational Contexts.” In 2019 11th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games).

2. Books/Monographs：

Embodying Politeness in Persuasive Humanoid Agents for Small Group Scenarios, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 2024, ISBN: 978-91-8040-833-2, Sole Author.