Gabriel Skantze

Professor

Kungliga Tekniska Högskolanhttps://www.kth.se/profile/skantze

Works for

DIVISION OF SPEECH, MUSIC AND HEARING

Telephone

+46 8 790 78 74

Address

LINDSTEDTSVÄGEN 24

E-mail

skantze@kth.se

Researcher ID

ORCID IDGoogle Scholar ID

About me

I am a Professor in Speech Communication and Technology, with a specialization in Conversational Systems, at the Department of Speech Music and Hearing at KTH in Stockholm.

In my research I study human communication and develop computational models that allow computers and robots to have face-to-face conversations with humans. This involves both verbal and non-verbal (gaze, prosody, etc) aspects of communication, and my research involves phenomena such as turn-taking, feedback, and joint attention, as well as language learning and grounding. Since social robots are likely to play an important role in our future society, the technology has direct applications, but it can also be used to increase our understanding of the mechanisms behind human communication. This requires an interdisciplinary approach, which includes language technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, phonetics, and linguistics.

In 2014, I co-founded the company Furhat Robotics together with Samer Al Moubayed and Jonas Beskow at KTH. I am working part-time as a Chief Scientist in the company.

I am President Emeritus of SIGdial, the ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, Associate Editor for the Human-Robot Interaction section of Frontiers in Robotics and AI, and Action Editor for the ACL Rolling Review.

I am an alumni member of the Young Academy of Sweden - an independent, cross-disciplinary forum for some of the most promising young researchers in Sweden in all disciplines.

Background

I have a MSc in Cognitive Science from Linköping University and I did my PhD in Speech Communication at KTH in 2007. The title of my thesis is Error Handling in Spoken Dialogue Systems: Managing Uncertainty, Grounding and Miscommunication. I was a post-doc at the University of Potsdam in 2008, became Docent in Speech Technology at KTH in 2012, Assistant Professor in 2013, Associate Professor in 2016 and Professor in 2018.

Master thesis opportunities

Contact me if you are interested in doing your Master thesis in any of the projects listed below.

Ongoing research projects

	Modeling Turn-taking in Conversation How can we use deep learning models to predict turn-taking in a conversation? How can such models be used to improve spoken human-machine interaction? How can they be used to deepen our understanding of human communication?
	Modeling Feedback and Gaze in Human-Robot Interaction How can we develop models that can be used to generate and understand feedback and gaze behaviour in dialogue?
	Anthropomorphism in HRI and Chatbots How can we use experimental paradigms from behavioral economics to study human trust towards robots?
	Visual Grounding in Dialogue How can a robot understand references to objects in the shared visual scene, and also make references to objects?
	Robots as Hosts on Autonomous Buses How can social robots be used as hosts on driverless busses?
	Conversational Robots for Language Learning. How can social robots be used for language learning?
	Conversational Robots as Virtual Patients Can robots simulate patients and be used as a tool to train medical students on how to talk to patients and develop their clinical reasoning skills?

My research is funded by:

Recorded presentations

SoRAIM HRI Winter school: Predictive modeling of turn-taking in human-robot interaction (Feb 2024)
Chalmers AI ethics seminar series: Human-likeness in robotics and conversational AI: Opportunities and risks (Dec 2022)
Keynote at SIGDIAL 2020: Conversational Turn-taking in Human-Robot Interaction
AI Forward Forum (Apr 2022)

Awards

Best Paper Award at SIGDIAL 2022, Edinburgh
Honourable mention Award, CUI 2019, Dublin
Nominated for Test-of-time Award, NAACL 2018, New Orleans
Nominated for Best Paper Award at HRI 2017, Vienna
Best Paper Award at ICSR 2016, Kansas City
Nominated for Outstanding Paper Award at ICMI 2015, Seattle
Two nominations for Best Paper Award at SIGDIAL 2013, Metz
Robotdalen Innovation Award (2nd prize) 2013
Outstanding Demo Award at ICMI 2012, Santa Monica
Best Paper Award at SIGDIAL 2010, Tokyo

Ongoing PhD supervision

Nikita Torgashov (2025-), Main supervisor, KTH
Bram Willemsen (2019-), Main supervisor, KTH
Alireza Mahmoudi Kamelabad (2021-), Main supervisor, KTH
Livia Qian (2022-), Main supervisor, KTH
Charlotte Stinkeste (2022-), Main supervisor, KTH
Haotian Qi (2023-), Main supervisor, KTH
Shaul Ashkenazi (2021-), Co-supervisor, University of Glasgow
Alexander Borg (2021-), Co-supervisor, Karolinska Institutet

Post-docs

Julio Cesar Cavalcanti de Oliveira (2025-)
Bahar Irfan (2022-)
Binger Jiang (2021-2023)

Past PhD supervision

Carol Figueroa (2021-2024), Main supervisor, Furhat & Université d'Aix-Marseille
Chinmaya Mishra (2021-2024), Main supervisor, Furhat & Radboud University
Erik Ekstedt (2018-2023), Main supervisor, KTH
Agnes Axelsson (2018-2023), Main supervisor, KTH
Dmytro Kalpakchi (2018-2023), Co-supervisor, KTH
Ronald Cumbal (2019-2024), Co-supervisor, KTH
Peter Blomsma (2021-2023), Co-supervisor, Tilburg University
Dimosthenis Kontogiorgos (2016-2022), Co-supervisor, KTH
Maike Paetzel (2015-2020), Co-supervisor, Uppsala Unversity
Martin Johansson, (2012-2020), Main supervisor, KTH
Raveesh Meena (2011-2016), Main supervisor, KTH
Jana Götze (2011-2016), Co-supervisor, KTH