Frau Prof. Dr.-Ing. Britta Wrede

Britta Wrede is head of the Medical Assistive Systems Group at the Medical School OWL at Bielefeld University and member of the Scientific Board of the TRR 318 Constructing Explainability as well as the representative of the Medical School in the scientific board of the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC).

After receiving her M.A. and PhD from the Faculty of Linguistics in 1999 and the Technical Faculty in 2002 respectively, she worked together with E. Shriberg for a year as DAAD fellow at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley to investigate hotspots in dialogs. After rejoining Bielefeld University and working on different projects, she became head of the Applied Informatics Group in 2009. In 2019 she took the opportunity to join the newly founded Medical School OWL leading her new research group on Medical Assistive Systems. In 2022 she joined University of Bremen for a year to collaborate with Michael Beetz on co-constructive task learning and with Tanja Schultz on the integration of biosignals in Human-Robot Interaction research to analyse brain signals during interactions with a robot.

In her work Britta Wrede has focused on understanding and modelling multimodal interaction strategies in human-agent interaction by applying and developing theoretical accounts on pragmatics in establishing mutual understanding especially in children. This entails the use of multimodal communication channels such as facial expressions or eye gaze which are also important for adult users in everyday learning situations such as work assistance systems. Britta Wrede’s research on developing assistive systems for therapy and diagnostic support is based on the hypothesis that assistance needs to be embedded in social interaction.

Britta Wrede is member of the DFG Senate committee for Graduate Schools. She is co-editor of the German Journal of Artificial Intelligence (Künstliche Intelligenz) and associate editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR). She is or has been Principal Investigator in several EU projects (CODEFROR, ITALK, RobotDoc, Humavips) and national projects funded by DFG (EXC 277 Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), TRR 318 Constructing Explainability, CRC 673 Alignment in Communication), DLR (Sozirob – The Robot as Fitness Coach), DAAD ( DAAD Thematic Network on Intelligent Systems) and BMBF (KogniHome, DESIRE – Deutsche Service Robotik Initiative).