Scientific Experiences

October 2018 – Present. UX & HMI Designer.
RE:Lab S.r.l., Reggio Emilia (Italy).

September 2017 – August 2018. Ergonomics & UX researcher.
Dept. of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento (Italy).

March 2018 – June 2018. Teacher “Social Interaction”, International Master in Human-Computer Interaction.
University of Trento (Italy).

December 2016 – January 2017. Visiting researcher.
Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences;
Isituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova (Italy).

February 2016 – January 2017. Postdoc Researcher.
Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research Lab,
Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Universität Bielefeld, Germany.
Supervisor: Dr. Prof., Friederike Eyssel.

Education

November 2012 – December 2015.
Doctoral School in Psychological Science and Education, Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento (Italy).
Dissertation Title: “Too Human To Be a Machine: The Role of Anthropomorphic Appearance in Social Robotics”.
Advisor: Dr. Prof., Maria Paola Paladino.

October 2008 – June 2011. Sc.
Social Psychology of Work and Communication, University of Padua (Italy).
Dissertation title: “Forming and Changing Impressions about People: The Role of Political Ideology and Threat”.
Advisor: Dr. Prof., Luigi Castelli. Co-advisor: Dr., Luciana Carraro.

October 2004 – July 2008. Sc.
Psychological Sciences of Personality and Interpersonal Relationship, University of Padua (Italy).
Dissertation title: “The construction of discursive configuration ‘consumer of drugs’; an empirical research within different age groups”.
Advisor: Dr. Prof., Gian Piero Turchi.

Other Scientific Experiences

August 2014 – February 2015. Visiting PhD Student.
Laboratory and research activity at the School of Psychology, University of Kent, United Kingdom.
Supervisor: Dr. Prof., Roger Giner-Sorolla.

September 2011 – September Trainee.
Laboratory and research activity at Human-Technology Lab, Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy.
Supervisor: Dr. Prof., Luciano Gamberini.

January – June 2011. Sc. Internship.
Laboratory and research activity at Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Italy.
Supervisor: Dr. Prof., Luigi Castelli and Dr. Luciana Carraro.

September 2009 – June 2010. Erasmus student exchange program.
University of Salamanca, Faculty of Psychology, Spain.

October 2007 – June 2008. Sc. Internship.
Intervention on “harm reduction” promoted by ‘Paduan Families Association Against Social Exclusion and Drugs Addiction’, Padua, Italy.

Grants & Awards

DAAD Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, TN-IIS Thematic Network Interactive Intelligent Systems, for German Academic Exchange, from 12th December 2016 to 31st January 2017.

Award for Best Poster at XIV National Congress of Social Psychology Section of Italian Association of Psychology, 22 – 24 September 2016 (Naples, Italy).

DFG Postdoctoral scholarship from February 2016 (ongoing). CITEC – Universität Bielefeld (Germany).

Doctoral scholarship from November 2012 to October 2015. Department of Cognitive Science and Education, University of Trento (Italy).

Erasmus grant from October 2009 to June 2010, University of Padua (Italy).

Durante il mio dottorato di ricerca presso il Dipartimento di Psicologia e Scienze Cogntive dell’Università di Trento, mi sono focalizzato sui processi psicologici sia sociali che cognitivi nei confronti di robot humanlike.

Come ricercatore postdoc presso il CITEC, Universität Bielefeld (Germania), ho investigato gli effetti psicologici e comportamentali dell’ostracismo (esclusione sociale) nei confronti dei robot sociali.

Presso il Robotics, Brain, Cognitive Science Lab dell’Istituto Italiano di Tecnologica ho collaborato ad uno studio sugli effetti psiciologici, emotivi e comportamentali della percezione di un robot come ingroup (vs. outgrooup) member.

Attualmente lavoro presso RE:Lab S.r.l. come UX e HMI Designer in ambito automotive.

Andreetto, M., Divan, S., Ferrari, F., Fontanelli, D., Palopoli, L., & Zenatti, F. (2018). Simulating Passivity for Robotic Walkers via Authority-Sharing. In IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).

Ferrari, F., & Eyssel, F. (November, 2016). Toward a Hybrid Society: The transformation of robots, from objects to social agents. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2016).

Ferrari, F., Paladino, M.P., & Jetten, J. (2016). Blurring human-machine distinctions: Anthropomorphic appearance in social robotics as a threat to human distinctiveness. International Journal of Social Robotics, 8, (2), pp 287-302. DOI: 10.1007/s12369-016-0338-y.

Ferrari, F. (2015). Robot: Da schiavi senz’anima a s-oggetti sociali. Officina.  Bimestrale online di Architettura e Tecnologia, IUAV. 6 (Maggio – Giugno 2015), pp. 8 – 13. ISSN 2384-9029. https://issuu.com/officina-artec/docs/officina_06/10

Ferrari, F., & Paladino, M.P. (2014). Validation of the Psychological Scale for General Impressions of Humanoids in an Italian Sample. Proceedings of The 13 th   International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Workshop: Evaluating Social Robots, 18 th July, Padua, Italy.