Gabriela Vega

Currently, I am a Master's student in Media Informatics at Saarland University in Germany and a research assistant in the Sensorimotor Interaction Group at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, where I work with Dr. Paul Strohmeier on human augmentation, haptics, and wearables.

Previously, I collaborated with Dr. Shunichi Kasahara at the Cybernetic Humanity Studio at SonyCSL/OIST in Japan, with Prof. Audrey Girouard and Prof. Karen Cochrane at the Creative Interactions Lab at Carleton University in Canada, and with Prof. Katia Vega at the Interactive Organisms Lab at UC Davis. I hold a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences (UPC), where I worked on IoT and Edge AI for agriculture. I have previously worked in industry as AI Engineer specializing in computer vision solutions for Edge devices.

I am interested in human-computer interaction, wearables, haptics, IoT, human wellbeing, AI companions, and AI alignement. Feel free to reach out if you're interested in projects or collaborations!

News

Main Projects & Publications

Other Projects

Grants & Awards

• Second Place, Hackathon, ACM WomENcourage Conference, Romania (2025)
  
• Honorable Mention, Global Dialogues Challenge, The Collective Intelligence Project (2025)
  
• Scholar, Female@Tech Scholarship, Deutsche Telekom (2025)
  
• Young Researcher, 10th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) (2023)
  
• Fellowship, Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program (ELAP), Government of Canada (2022)
  Granted CAD$8,000 for research internship
  
• Research Fellowship, REPU Program (Research Experience for Peruvian Undergraduates) (2021)
  
• Undergraduate Scholarship, Ministry of Education, Peru (2020)
  

Academic Service

• Web Chair for Augmented Humans 2027
  
• Reviewer for Augmented Humans 2026, CHI 2025, and MuC 2025
  
• Student volunteer for UIST 2021 and 2022, ISMAR 2021, TEI 2022, IUI 2022, DIS 2022, MobileHCI 2022, Ubicomp 2023, CHI 2024 and 2025
  

Leadership & Volunteering

• AI Safety Group at Saarland University, Organizing Team (2025)
  
• RobBuild Education, Teaching programming to children using VEXcode VR (2021)
  
• INGENIA, Promoting STEM careers and providing guidance to high school Peruvian girls and early-year female students (2021)
  
• Pan American Games Lima 2019, Technology Volunteer (2019)
  
• IEEE Communication Society UPC Chapter, Vice President (2017–2022)
  

Old News

• [07/25] I was accepted to attend the ACM WomENcourage Conference and received a travel scholarship.
• [07/25] I attended the IEEE World Haptics Conference and visited HCI labs at KAIST, Seoul National University, and Kyung Hee University.

Miscellany

• I love traveling — I've visited 22 countries and lived in 4: 🇵🇪 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇯🇵 Some of the places I've explored include: 🇨🇳 🇯🇵 🇰🇷 🇲🇳 🇭🇰 🇧🇷 🇨🇴 🇨🇱 🇺🇾 🇲🇽 🇺🇸 🇱🇺 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇧🇪 🇳🇱 🇪🇸 🇨🇭 🇮🇳.

• Current hobbies: crocheting, media arts and Hello Kitty collection 🧶