The European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics
15 – 18 September 2026 Siena, Italy
Keynotes
The European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics is pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the conference.
At ECCE 2026, leading voices from across the field come together to share their vision for the future. Our keynote speakers will take the stage in Siena to present bold ideas, pioneering research, and powerful insights that spark innovation and collaboration.
Meet the Keynote Speakers of ECCE 2026
Patrizia Marti
Patrizia Marti is Professor of Experience Design at the University of Siena. She is Rector’s delegate of Santa Chiara Fab Lab where she manages participatory innovation projects. She is a member of the Board of Directors of SID – Società Italiana di Design. From 2013 until 2019 she was appointed Professor at the Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology. She is responsible for a Kitchen Lab, a kitchen-laboratory which aims to bring innovation in the field of food processing, integrating the potential of a traditional kitchen with the use of innovative technologies. She has been expert advisor to many EU and international bodies, including EU Commission, EU Future & Emerging Technologies Programme, EU Intelligent Information Interfaces, Eurocontrol, EU Disappearing Computer, UX group at University of Warsaw (Poland), Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems. She has been an invited keynote speaker at various international conferences. She has also been the editor for special issues of international journals. She has an interdisciplinary background in design, philosophy and computing. Her research focuses on designing technological systems in sectors such as health, accessibility, cultural heritage, and food. She studies the impact of digital technologies on humans, society and the environment.
The Future Is More Than Human: Cultivating Adaptive Relationships Among Humans, Technologies, and the Living World
Abstract
Artificial intelligence, data-driven technologies, and hybrid physical-digital environments are reshaping the ecosystems in which we live. Yet the future of these ecosystems should not be defined by intelligence alone. Rather than asking how to make technologies smarter, we should ask how design can cultivate more ecological, equitable, ethical, and inclusive relationships among humans, technologies, communities, and the living world.
This keynote argues that design is shifting from creating isolated products and services to cultivating adaptive ecosystems where value emerges through relationships. Two research trajectories illustrate this transition. The first explores bio-design practices in which plants become co-design partners, demonstrating how collaboration with living systems can support food innovation. The second examines a healthcare case study across three interconnected levels—product, care ecosystem, and planetary impact—showing how patient-centred design evolves into a systemic and more-than-human perspective. Ultimately, the keynote proposes a relational vision of design as a catalyst for resilient, living ecosystems and systemic transformation.
Harry Witchel
Professor Harry J. Witchel is Discipline Leader of Physiology on the University of Sussex campus of Brighton and Sussex Medical School (UK). His team researches the interplay between cognitive engagement and human movement for mitigating the effects of boredom and mind wandering in order to improve work performance and study. In 2016 his team published biomechanical evidence that human engagement leads to inhibition of non-instrumental activity, which was covered by the international news media.
In 2019 his research team won the International Prize for best conference paper from EACE, and he has won 2 national and 11 university awards for teaching, as well as being senior editor for the book “Technologies in Biomedical and Life Sciences Education” (2022, American Physiological Society). His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree in Biophysics included the Core Curriculum at Columbia College in New York City.
Human Factors: How Mary Shelley might see our Future
Abstract
This lecture takes a light-hearted ramble through a life that spanned from Napoleon to abolition and Railway Mania, imagining how Mary Shelley, who as a wild and scandalous 19-year-old dreamed up the story of Frankenstein, might view today’s human factors research questions that are close to my heart. We will let her use systems thinking (and James Reason’s “Swiss Cheese Model”) to imagine both the benefits and risks in generative AI. What would the author of the first science fiction novel have to say about multiple causation? What would Percy Bysshe Shelley’s wife, grieving widow and a lone parent say about responsibility? What would the daughter of two radical trailblazers of the Enlightenment, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, say about inhibited actions and self-control? Along the way, we will consider a defining ambition of human factors (and of my research): the attempt to quantify things that seem, at first blush, fundamentally human, for example, human movement or communication. Two centuries after Frankenstein, Mary Shelley still has something to say about how we design, use and take responsibility for the technologies we create.
Agnieszka Wykowska
Professor Agnieszka Wykowska leads the unit “Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction” (S4HRI) at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT, Genoa, Italy), where she is also the coordinator of the Center for Human Technologies (CHT). She is also coordinator of IIT’s Brain and Machines Flagship Program. In addition, she is a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University in Munich. She graduated in neuro-cognitive psychology (2006, LMU Munich), obtained PhD in psychology (2008) and the German “Habilitation” (2013) from LMU Munich. In 2016 she was awarded the ERC Starting grant “InStance”: “Intentional Stance for Social Attunement”. In 2024, she was awarded the ERC Proof-of-Concept grant “RONIN“: Robot Training Independence. She is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Social Robotics (IJSR). Between 2022 and 2024 she served as President of European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN). She is a Member of Board of Directors, and a Founding Member of Association of ERC Grantees (AERG). In 2025 she has been awarded the André Mischke award for outstanding scientists involved in science policy by the Young Academy Europe. In her research, she combines cognitive neuroscience methods with human-robot interaction in order to understand the human brain mechanisms in interaction with natural and artificial agents.
Humanoid Robots as Social Partners
Abstract
As robots are believed to soon populate human environments, they have received enthusiastic support in the scientific community. Research in the field of human-robot interaction aims at designing robots for assisting humans in daily lives, healthcare, or elderly care. In my talk, I will focus on how important it is to understand the human side of human-robot interaction in order to design robots that are well attuned to the needs of the user. I will then demonstrate how humanoid robots can be integrated as partners in shared tasks, and how they can offer cognitive support. I will present our work on human-robot joint action and collaboration, as well as results from our lab demonstrating how a humanoid robot can be used to successfully train social skills in children diagnosed with autism and how this can be extended to cognitive rehabilitation for the elderly. In conclusion, I will argue that robots’ physical embodiment has the advantage over disembodied AI systems when the user needs to perform actions in the physical or social environments.