Wafa Johal
Associate Professor
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolWafa Johal is a Franco-Australian Associate Professor in Human-Robot Interaction based in Melbourne with a decade of experience translating UX, AI and robotics research into practical, user-centred systems. Her career spans high-impact academic roles from a PhD and postdoc in Grenoble and EPFL to faculty appointments at UNSW and the University of Melbourne, where she now leads research on making robots useful and acceptable to end users. She combines rigorous computational methods with social-science informed design—grounded in degrees across computer science, mathematics and cognitive sciences—to tackle real-world HRI challenges. Known for bridging theory and practice, she has a track record of mentoring students and embedding user experience into robot behaviour and interaction design. A multilingual researcher with roots in both European and Australian labs, she brings a global perspective to interdisciplinary teams and long-term deployments.
10 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor Degree, Mathematics and Computer Sciences applied to Social Sciences, Bachelor Degree, Mathematics and Computer Sciences applied to Social Sciences at Université Pierre Mendès-France (Grenoble II)Deug, Biologie, Deug, Biologie at Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble I)Master Research, Computer Science, Master Research, Computer Science at Université Grenoble AlpesBAFA - Brevet d'Animation et de Formation à l'Animation, Jeux et Chants- Spécialité : Voyage International, BAFA - Brevet d'Animation et de Formation à l'Animation, Jeux et Chants- Spécialité : Voyage International at Eclaireurs et Eclaireuses de FranceSocial Human Robot Interaction Summer SchoolL3, Computer Science, Mathematics, Cognitive Sciences, L3, Computer Science, Mathematics, Cognitive Sciences at Washington College
Github Skills (33)
imdb10
movie9
nao-robot9
extraction9
parser9
scraper9
ranking9
ros-node8
react8
science8
pdf7
sql7
computer-science7
python7
database7
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
WafaJohal/wafajohal.github.io
Sep 2023 - May 2026
Github Pages template for academic personal websites, forked from mmistakes/minimal-mistakes
Contributions:2 PRs, 192 pushes in 2 years 8 months
CHRI-Lab/CHRI-Lab.github.io
Dec 2020 - Jun 2026
Contributions:1 PR, 215 pushes, 1 branch in 5 years 7 months
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