52 Excellence in Schools
D r Sharifa is widely recognised for her work on human-robot interaction and for developing robots capable of interpreting emotional cues in both Arabic and English. Her journey from early education in Saudi Arabia to a research role at MIT’s Personal Robots Group offers an inspiring model for students in the Kingdom and highlights Saudi contributions to a globally significant field. Over three sessions at the school’s Misk City campus, Dr Sharifa and her team member, Tasneem Burgleh, worked closely with small groups from the Junior and Upper Primary Schools. Junior students explored basic shapes and block coding, while Upper Primary students completed more advanced robotic drawing activities. The workshop format allowed each participant to receive direct guidance while gaining insight into real-time research taking place at MIT. Commenting on the visit, Dr Steffen Sommer, Misk Schools’ Director General said: ‘Dr Sharifa’s work is important not only because it is technically advanced, but because it is rooted in a Saudi perspective shaping global research from within MIT. Her visit gave our students something rare: direct contact with a scientist who is expanding what human-robot interaction can look like in Arabic as well as English. We are proud to connect our learners with voices shaping the future of the field.’ Introducing Students to Doodlebot Dr Sharifa’s background includes multimodal AI, behaviour modelling and mental health applications of robotics. After graduating from King Saud University, she earned an MSc in Software Engineering from the University of Canberra and completed a PhD in multimodal AI at the Australian National University. Her current research studies how robots use speech, gaze and movement to read human mood and behaviour. She is part of the MIT team behind Doodlebot, a social mobile robot designed for long-term use in AI education in K to 12 classrooms. Through block-based programming, students can teach Doodlebot to recognise faces and objects, apply these models to guide robot behaviour, and influence how it draws, dances or expresses emotion. By blending art with STEM learning, Doodlebot helps students build both technical ability and a personal connection with the technology they create.
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