https://www.emayedoun.com/ News and announcements from Emmanuel Ayedoun, Associate Professor at Kansai University: HCI, educational AI, and embodied conversational agents. en Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:23:29 GMT Attending the 28th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, October 5-9, to present current work on autonomous non-verbal behaviour for embodied listening agents. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html October 2026-ICMI 2026 in Naples, Italy Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Conference Spent August in Benin advancing joint work with researchers there, including time on the Abomey-Calavi University campus. I also met a group of Japanese students working alongside Beninese students, mixed into teams, building something together across the language barrier. A reminder that autonomy is less a matter of culture than of whether the environment invites it. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html August 2026-Research Visit to Benin Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Academic Visit Gave a seminar talk, "From Cognition to Calibrated Emotion: Designing Affectively Intelligent Conversational Agents", to the NLP group at the National Research Council Canada, hosted by Saif Mohammad and Sowmya Vajjala. The argument: socially competent listening sometimes requires the opposite of warmth, and affective appropriateness, knowing when to lean in and when to hold back, deserves a place alongside helpfulness and harmlessness as an objective for aligning conversational AI. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html July 2026-Invited Talk at the NRC Canada NLP Seminar Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Invited Talk Our paper "Beyond Toxic Positivity: Interpersonal Affect Regulation in LLM-Based Dialogue Agents using Discourse Politeness Theory" (with Rina Sakagami and Prof. Masataka Tokumaru) received the Best Paper Award at the CAS workshop of LREC 2026. Honored to see this line of work on emotionally-aware dialogue agents recognized! https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html May 2026-Best Paper Award, CAS @ LREC 2026 Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Award A ten month visiting scholar stay, April 2026 through January 2027, with Prof. Davinia Hernández-Leo's TIDE research group in Barcelona, Spain. Research Keywords: Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Augmented Reality (AR), Generative AI, Social Agents, Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA), L2 Acquisition. https://www.upf.edu/es/web/tide/home/-/asset_publisher/Ld8TYlfVJaAm/content/emmanuel-ayedoun-visting-scholar-at-tide/maximized April 2026-Sabbatical Stay at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Sabbatical Visited GUT accompanying students from KU for their internship. Also gave a talk on "Beyond Fluency: Crafting Imperfect Dialogue Interfaces for Emotion-Oriented Interactions". Grateful for the very warm welcome, looking forward to elevating this partnership between KU and GUT to new heights. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html February 2026-Academic Visit to Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Academic Visit Congratulations to lab student Ryusei Azuma for receiving the Impressive Poster Award at the Human Agent Interaction Symposium. A well-deserved recognition for a very interesting research topic! https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html February 2026-Lab Student Wins Impressive Poster Award Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Award Paper on an exercise support system using spectator robot behavior in virtual spaces (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.3156/jsoft.38.1_537 https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html February 2026-New Paper in Journal of Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Publication Participated in the 33rd International Conference on Computers in Education, presenting research and serving as Extended Summaries Chair. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html December 2025-Attended ICCE 2025 in Chennai, India Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Conference With deep sadness, I honor the memory of my mentor who was not just an academic guide, but a second father. His legacy lives on. seta-tribute.html November 2025-In Memory of Prof. Kazuhisa Seta Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT In Memoriam Honored to host Prof. Kristiina Jokinen (AIST & University of Helsinki) for a guest lecture on dialogue systems and human-robot interaction. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html September 2025-Visit by Prof. Kristiina Jokinen Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Guest Lecture Gave a talk on "Beyond Cognition: Designing Emotionally Intelligent Conversational Agents for the Future of Human Learning" with Prof. Björn Schuller's team. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html June 2025-Talk at Technical University of Munich Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT Invited Talk Presented a paper on "Enhancing L2 Learning through AI-Powered Dialogue Scenario Generation: An Interactive Authoring System for Educators" at HCII 2025 in Sweden. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html June 2025-Presented at HCII 2025 in Gothenburg Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT Conference Visited Prof. Davinia Hernández-Leo's TIDE team in Barcelona and gave a talk on "Emotion-Oriented Dialogue Systems for Language Learning Support." https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html May 2025-Visit to Universitat Pompeu Fabra Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Invited Talk Attended IWSDS 2025 in Spain and presented a paper on "Adaptive Psychological Distance in Japanese Spoken Human-Agent Dialogue." https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html May 2025-Presented at IWSDS 2025 in Bilbao Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Conference Began new role at Kansai University, continuing research in educational AI and human-computer interaction. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html April 2025-Promoted to Associate Professor Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Career Awarded JSPS Grant-in-Aid for immersive L2 learning research. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html April 2025-New JSPS Research Grant Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Grant Appointed as Extended Summaries Chair for the 33rd ICCE in Chennai, India. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html March 2025-ICCE 2025 Extended Summaries Chair Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT Service "Assessing My Own Japanese" published in Shogakukan's series. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html 2025-Book Chapter Published Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Publication Paper on "MESHing Minds" received best student paper award in Manila. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html November 2024-Best Student Paper, ICCE 2024 Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT Award Research on advertisement generation recognized at KEER in Taiwan. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html November 2024-Best Paper, KEER 2024 Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT Award Presented research on group norm-aware agents at the Human-Computer Interaction International conference. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html June 2024-Presented at HCII 2024 Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT Conference Continuing to build the research lab and mentor students in educational technology and AI. https://www.emayedoun.com/news-list.html April 2024-Started 5th Year at Kansai University Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT career