Pourya Shahverdi 🧑‍💻️
Pourya Shahverdi

Robotics | AI/ML | Affective Computing | HRI/HCI

Oakland University

About Me

I build artificail emotional intelligence for social robots and virtual agents to make them understand, adaptively respond, and influence human behavior in socially and emotionally meaningful ways. To achieve this goal, my work connects three fields: robotics, artificial intelligence, and human science.

If you are interested in this, feel free to reach out. I welcome opportunities for collaboration, discussion, and innovation.

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Interests
  • Social Robotics
  • Human-Robot Interaction
  • Affective Computing
  • Robot Learning from Demonstration
  • Humanoid
Education

  • Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Oakland University (MI-USA)

  • M.Sc. Mechatronics Engineering

    University of Tehran and Azad University of Qazvin (Iran)

  • B.Sc. Robotics Engineering

    Hamedan University of Technology (Iran)

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Featured Projects
Recent Publications
Iman Bakhoda , Pourya Shahverdi , Katelyn Rousso , Evan Dallas , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2025). Robot-mediated Read-aloud Context of Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Development. Computers & Education-Under Review.
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Pourya Shahverdi , Iman Bakhoda , Katelyn Rousso , Justin Klotz , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2025). The Dynamics of Story Internalization: A Pathway to Deeper Interaction with Social Robots. 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)-Under Review.
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Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie , Tanya Christ , Amanda Wowra , Danielle Alexander , Iman Bakhoda , Pourya Shahverdi (2024). “If a Robot was Teaching, Then Everybody Would Definitely Like School Better”: An Analysis of Grade 3-5 Children’s Perceptions of Learning STEM Vocabulary with an Educational Social Robot. 2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN).
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Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie , Tanya Christ , Pourya Shahverdi , Katelyn Rousso , Evan Dallas , Alexander Tyshka , Amanda Wowra , Kendra Barnett , Iman Bakhoda (2024). Exploring Task-Level Contingent Mediations for Vocabulary Instruction across Robot, Virtual, and Human Teachers. 2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN).
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Pourya Shahverdi , Iman Bakhoda , Katelyn Rousso , Justin Klotz , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2024). Exploring the Impact of Narrator Type on Response Latency and Utterance Length During Interactive Storytelling. 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
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Christopher M Wilson , Lori Boright , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie , Pourya Shahverdi , Sara K Arena , Ronald Benbow , Jason R Wilson , Qinghua Chen , Katie Rousso , Nathan Huang (2023). Effect of robotic delivery of physical activity and fall prevention exercise in older adults: a pilot cohort study. Cureus.
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Pourya Shahverdi , Katelyn Rousso , Justin Klotz , Iman Bakhoda , Malek Zribi , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2023). Emotionally Specific Backchanneling in Social Human-Robot Interaction and Human-Human Interaction. 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
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Keyhan Rayati , Amirhossein Feizi , Alireza Beigy , Pourya Shahverdi , Mehdi Tale Masouleh , Ahmad Kalhor , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2023). Real-Time Imitation of Human Head Motions, Blinks and Emotions by Nao Robot: A Closed-Loop Approach. 2023 11th RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICRoM).
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Pourya Shahverdi , Katelyn Rousso , Iman Bakhoda , Nathan Huang , Kristin Rohrbeck , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2023). Robot-mediated Job Interview Training for Individuals with ASD: A Pilot Study. 2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).
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Qinghua Chen , Evan Dallas , Pourya Shahverdi , Jessica Korneder , Osamah A. Rawashdeh , Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (2022). A Sample Efficiency Improved Method via Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Networks. 2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).
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