Nadezhda Kushina is a first-year PhD researcher at the Robotics Research Laboratory, RPTU Kaiserslautern, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Karsten Berns. Her research focuses on human-robot interaction (HRI) and cognitive responses to social robots in assistive and care contexts. She studies how people form trust, emotional connection, and comfort during interaction with humanoid robots such as Ameca. 

Nadezhda’s academic path bridges human-centered experimentation and applied technology. During her Master’s in Cognitive Science at RPTU, she investigated how speech rate influences language comprehension using eye-tracking. Before starting her PhD, Nadezhda gained interdisciplinary experience in both academic and industrial environments. At Harman International (Germany and Russia), she conducted and supervised over 300 experiments combining eye-tracking, EEG, ECG, and respiration sensors to explore stress, attention, and cognitive load during driving. She also developed pilot studies for detecting stress in real-world conditions and trained more than 30 experimenters internationally to maintain data quality and participant comfort. Earlier, as a researcher at Lobachevsky University, she carried out over 200 behavioral and psychophysiological studies, developing a strong background in data-driven human research and experimental design. 

Her current work continues this human-centered approach, combining insights from psychophysiology and social cognition to understand how people perceive and accept robots as social companions. Within the broader goal of socially supportive robotics, she aims to apply these insights to elder care: developing robot-assisted activities that promote engagement, reduce loneliness, and support cognitive well-being.