Cynthia Breazeal is an American scientist and business leader who works in artificial intelligence and robotics. She is known for creating robots that can interact with people, a field called social robotics. She helped start a company named Jibo in 2012, where she led the science and experience teams. Jibo made robots designed to help families at home. Today, she is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT, she leads the Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab, serves as dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning, and directs the MIT RAISE Initiative. Her research focuses on how people live with artificial intelligence in daily life, and she has worked to teach young people about AI.

Early life and education

As the daughter of two computer scientists working in government research centers, she had early exposure to computer science and engineering. Breazeal earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1989. She later received a Master of Science in 1993 and a Doctor of Science in 2000, both in electrical engineering and computer science, from MIT. After seeing NASA land a robot on Mars in 1997, she questioned why robots could reach Mars but not help people in daily life. This led her to change her focus and create the world's first social robot, Kismet, while also starting the field of social robotics.

Breazeal developed Kismet as part of her doctoral research under Rodney Brooks. Kismet studied how robots can show emotions and interact with humans, including when they work together as partners. Kismet and other robots Breazeal helped create during her time as a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab have been on display in the MIT Museum since 2000.

MIT career

Cynthia Breazeal is a professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. She started and leads the Personal Robots Group at MIT. She has written several books about AI and robotics and has published many papers that other experts have reviewed and cited often. She also works on editorial boards and committees for robots that operate on their own.

At MIT, Breazeal’s research has studied how robots can interact with people using natural ways, such as speaking, body language, and expressions. She explored how robots can build relationships with people over time, especially in areas like health, education, and wellness. Her work focuses on how people can live with AI in their daily lives. She aims to help people achieve long-term goals in areas where ongoing support is important, such as changing habits, learning, and teaching.

In 2021, Breazeal worked with professors Eric Klopfer and Hal Abelson to start the MIT RAISE Initiative. This project studies how AI can be used creatively and ethically, especially in K-12 education.

In January 2022, Breazeal became dean for digital learning at MIT. In this role, she leads MIT Open Learning’s programs that generate income through professional education and research. She identifies areas for innovation in teaching and learning and studies how different technologies can improve education.

Leonardo was one of Breazeal’s earliest robots, developed with Stan Winston Studio. It followed Kismet, a robot recognized in 2006 by Wired magazine as one of the "50 Best Robots Ever." Leonardo was used to study how robots can understand and learn from humans, such as through imitation and teamwork. Nexi was another robot created by Breazeal. It was named by Time magazine as one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2008. Nexi is a mobile, dexterous, and social robot that combines movement skills with social abilities to explore teamwork between humans and robots.

Breazeal also helped create Cyberflora, a robotic flower garden installation. It was displayed at the 2003 National Design Triennial at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Breazeal’s Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab has developed many real-world robot projects and published research on topics like education, health, aging, and improving the social and emotional abilities of AI and robots. Autom was a robot designed to help people with diet and exercise. Studies showed Autom was more effective than a computer in keeping users engaged and building trust. Breazeal’s group also created MeBot, a robot that helps people feel more connected during video calls compared to using a screen alone. Huggable was designed to support children in hospitals by helping them with their emotions and assisting child life specialists. Tega was created as a learning companion for young children to help with language and literacy. Instead of acting as a teacher, Tega played games with children like a friend. Studies showed Tega helped improve language skills and encouraged children to be more curious and creative.

In recent years, Breazeal’s work has focused on AI and education. Through MIT’s Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education initiative, she has led efforts to teach children about AI. She has emphasized the goal of making AI education accessible to all students. MIT RAISE uses a teaching method called computational action, which helps students think critically, work in teams, and solve problems creatively. In 2021, MIT RAISE launched the FutureMakers program, a free six-week summer course that teaches high school and early college students how to use AI and digital tools to make positive changes in their communities.

Also in 2021, MIT RAISE started Day of AI, an event that promotes AI education for everyone. Day of AI was created with i2 Learning president Ethan Berman. RAISE has developed free, open AI curricula, tools for learning through making, and teacher training programs. So far, tens of thousands of teachers and over a million students have participated in AI education programs in 50 U.S. states and 170 countries. RAISE has received funding from Google and DP World, among other organizations.

As MIT has taken a larger role in AI policy, Breazeal has written papers about the risks and benefits of AI in education for secondary schools. She has also created a report for government officials about how AI should be used properly in education.

Breazeal’s research has been cited over 40,000 times on Google Scholar, and she has an h-index of 100. This means she has written or co-written more than 100 papers, each cited more than 100 times. A typical h-index for a senior computer science researcher is usually between 30 and 60. Her most influential work includes her early research on social robots. Papers she co-authored with her students have been used in large language models for health, K-12 AI education, AI ethics, and studies on long-term human-robot interactions.

Industry work

On July 16, 2014, Breazeal started a successful Indiegogo campaign to raise money for Jibo, a personal assistant robot called the world's first family robot. She led the science and experience teams. Jibo met its goal to raise $70 million. Its natural social interface was the first consumer product to use far-field speech and machine vision to recognize people and their movements, turn to look at users, and show expressive behavior. Inspired by mobile app ecosystems, Jibo was the first personal robot to use these features to perform many tasks.

Jibo was released in November 2017. It was designed to be a helpful companion that could bring "content to life" in new ways beyond flat screens. It aimed to create more engaging social experiences, such as storytelling, games, and other entertainment. It also supported practical skills, like acting as an interactive photographer, recognizing people to deliver personalized news and weather reports, controlling smart home devices through IFTTT integration, playing music via iHeartRadio, and other functions.

Jibo generally received positive reviews for its innovative user experience and friendly design. However, it had fewer skills than Amazon Alexa and Google Home, which were available at lower prices. The company could not raise Series B funding, and in March 2020, NTT Corporation acquired Jibo Inc.'s assets for use in healthcare and education.

Breazeal returned to the MIT Media Lab in 2018 and used the Jibo platform to develop new AI capabilities. More recently, she used large language model (LLM) generative AI to support long-term interactions between people and robots in real-world settings, studying how social robot features and AI personas affect human outcomes. Her Personal Robots Group studied how a robot's physical form influences human engagement and perceptions of AI. They found that more expressive social features led to longer interactions and stronger feelings of trust, emotional connection, and companionship.

Since 2018, her research group has published studies using Jibo in homes, senior communities, and schools. Breazeal showed that Jibo, as a collaborative and emotionally engaging partner, can improve children's creative storytelling, strengthen parent-child learning through games and stories, help improve mental wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic, and encourage social interaction in senior communities. Her work highlights how Jibo's presence and companionship helped people achieve better, longer-lasting results.

Awards and recognition

• Breazeal worked as a consultant on the 2001 Spielberg-Kubric movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. She also played a key role as a virtual participant in a popular exhibit on robots, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, interacting with a real C-3PO (voiced by Anthony Daniels) as she spoke to the audience through a pre-recorded message shown on a large flat-screen display.
• Named in 2003 by the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of thirty-five.
• 2003 finalist for the National Design Award in Communication.
• Received the 2008 Gilbreth Lectures Award by the National Academy of Engineering.
• Nexi robot named one of Time magazine's Best Inventions of 2008.
• In 2014, recognized as an entrepreneur by Fortune magazine's Most Promising Women Entrepreneurs.
• 2014 recipient of the L'Oreal USA Women in Digital NEXT Generation Award.
• Received the 2014 George R. Stibitz Computer & Communications Pioneer Award for key contributions to the development of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction.
• Named in 2015 by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the Women to Watch.
• Jibo was named a 2025 winner of the Core77 Design Awards in the consumer products category.
• Jibo was featured on the cover of Time magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2017.
• In 2020, elected a AAAI Fellow by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
• Forbes 2023 50 Over 50.
• Recipient of the 2024 $50K Robotics Medal for Pioneering Women in Robotics by MassRobotics.
• Announced as a 2024 fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Named an IEEE Senior Member in 2025.

Selected works

• Breazeal, Cynthia (2002). Designing Sociable Robots. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-02510-8.
• Breazeal, Cynthia; Bar-Cohen, Yoseph (2003). Biologically Inspired Intelligent Robots. Bellingham, Washington: SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering). ISBN 0-8194-4872-9.

• Brooks, Rodney A.; Breazeal, Cynthia; Marjanović, Matthew; Scassellati, Brian; Williamson, Matthew M. (1999). Nehaniv, Chrystopher L. (ed.). "The Cog Project: Building a Humanoid Robot." Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer: 52–87. doi:10.1007/3-540-48834-0_5. ISBN 978-3-540-48834-7.
• Breazeal, Cynthia (2003). "Emotion and sociable humanoid robots." International Journal of Human-computer Studies. 59 (1–2): 119–155. doi: 10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00018-1.
• Breazeal, Cynthia (2003). "Toward sociable robots." Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 42 (3–4): 167–175. doi: 10.1016/S0921-8890(02)00373-1.
• Rahwan, Iyad; Cebrian, Manuel; Obradovich, Nick; Bongard, Josh; Bonnefon, Jean-François; Breazeal, Cynthia; Crandall, Jacob W.; Christakis, Nicholas A.; Couzin, Iain D.; Jackson, Matthew O.; Jennings, Nicholas R.; Kamar, Ece; Kloumann, Isabel M.; Larochelle, Hugo; Lazer, David (2019-04). "Machine behaviour." Nature. 568 (7753): 477–486.
• Breazeal, Cynthia; Rai, Arun; Ramesh, Balasubramaniam; Chen, Liwei; Long, Yuan; Aria, Andrea; Loi, Hao; Torralba, Antonio; Bernstein, Jeremy; Reich, Justin; Klopfer, Eric; Abelson, Hal; Westerman, George; Bosch, Christina (2024-03-27). "Opportunities, Issues, and Challenges for Generative AI in Fostering Equitable Pathways in Computing Education." An MIT Exploration of Generative AI.
• Klopfer, Eric, Justin Reich, Hal Abelson, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2024. "Generative AI and K-12 Education: An MIT Perspective." An MIT Exploration of Generative AI.
• DiPaola, Daniella; Salazar-Gómez, Andrés F.; Abelson, Hal; Klopfer, Eric; Goldston, David; Breazeal, Cynthia (2024). "How Policy Can Help Ensure the Proper Use of AI in K-12 Education" (PDF). MIT AI Policy Brief: K12 Education.
• Chen, Huili; Kim, Yubin; Patterson, Kejia; Breazeal, Cynthia; Park, Hae Won (2025-03-12). "Social robots as conversational catalysts: Enhancing long-term human-human interaction at home." Science Robotics. 10 (100): eadk3307. doi:10.1126/scirobotics.adk3307.