Qiaoqiao Ren

Hello! I am Qiaoqiao Ren. I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, working on the ERC-funded Intimate Touch project, which investigates how technologies can support rich, embodied, emotionally meaningful touch interactions. My research sits at the intersection of human–robot interaction (HRI), haptics, affective computing, and multimodal communication.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science Engineering in AIRO-IDLab at Ghent University, supervised by Prof. Tony Belpaeme and Prof. Francis wyffels. My doctoral work explored social and affective touch in human-robot interaction from the situational, multisensory and embodied perspective, including:

• full-body tactile interaction with the iCub humanoid robot,
• tactile–audio multimodal emotion decoding,
• robot-to-human affective touch expression via vibration and tactile sound,
• and using large language models to generate socially meaningful affective haptic data.

I am broadly interested in embodied interaction, social robotics, soma design, and how touch shapes social meaning in human–machine relationships.

Before that, I obtained my Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering Design with first-class honours from the University of Manchester, where my thesis focused on designing and simulating actuation systems for remotely adjusting pitch angles in supersonic wind tunnels.

If you’re interested in my work or would like to collaborate, please do not hesitate to get in touch via email at qiaoqiao[dot]ren[at]ugent[dot]be, or through any other contact methods I have listed below.