Hirokazu Shirado

As of 2024, Hirokazu Shirado is at Assistant Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Hiro takes great pleasure in entertaining people using technology involving the human sensing process and social interaction. His current research focuses on the experimental analysis of the emergence of cooperative action in social networks. His goal is to engineer social systems with more affordable participation.

His specialty is the design of “touch”. He holds a master’s in mechanical engineering, specifically in human tactile studies, and has been working as a researcher at Sony Corporation studying human-robot interaction. Through this work, he realized what ultimately makes people happy is not solely interaction with efficient tools but relationships with friends, and this changed his focus from technological to social studies. He believes his unique career can help to retouch the world and make it better.

Hiro received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University in May 2019.