Prof. Dr. Emily Cross

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A dancer and cognitive neuroscientist by training, Emily arrived at ETH Zurich in the spring of 2023, where she leads the Social Brain Sciences Professorship. Prior to this, she has held professorships at Bangor University (Wales), University of Glasgow (Scotland), Macquarie University (Australia) and the MARCS Institute at Western Sydney University (Australia). The defining characteristic of the work conducted by Cross and her team is a focus on how different kinds of embodied experience shape how we learn from and perceive others in a complex social world, and across a variety of experience domains. Throughout her career, Cross has combined intensive learning paradigms with pre-/post-training brain imaging measures, to build a richer understanding of experience-dependent plasticity at brain and behavioural levels. She is especially well-regarded for (1) identifying the neural signatures of embodied expertise using expert dancers and training paradigms; (2) combining neuroscience and performing arts to propose a new theory of embodied neuroaesthetics; (3) uncovering new insights into neurocognitive foundations of visual learning across the lifespan, and; (4) developing innovative neurocognitive paradigms to explore the mechanisms and consequences of people’s social engagement with robots.Her dynamic team embraces interdisciplinarity via research paradigms that bridge technology, performing/visual arts, and the biological and social sciences. In addition to building bridges across disciplines and research approaches, Cross is passionate about training the next generation of research scientists, with a particular focus on the many manifestations of research ethics. 

Cross’s work features in an eclectic range of high-profile publication outlets (e.g., Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Cognition, Journal of Neuroscience, International Journal of Social Robotics, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society), and has attracted funding from a range of national and international funders, including the Fulbright Commission, European Research Council (ERC), ESRC Future Research Leaders Award, ESPRC, the NIH and the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Furthermore, Cross has received a number of prizes recognizing her contributions to interdisciplinary study of the learning and the brain, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Psychology, the Jacob Bronowski Award from the British Science Foundation, and a Young Talent Award from the Dutch Neuroscience Society. Her contributions to social robotics research have been recognised by her being named on RoboHub’s and Insight Analytics annual lists of top women in robotics, and in 2022 she was selected as one of Australia’s Superstars of STEM. 

Cross is a member of the Young Academy of Europe and the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland, and serves as a Scientific Council member for the Institute of Advanced Study in Toulouse, and as one of 36 members on UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee, a role for which she recently served as co-rapporteur on a major UNESCO report on ethical considerations related to neurotechnology. She is an Associate Editor at the International Journal of Social Robotics and a member of the Editorial Board at Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. She has also served on organising committees for major computer science and interdisciplinary meetings, including Intelligent Virtual Agents, Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, and Virtual Social Interactions.