Rachael Burns is a robotics researcher specializing in human–robot interaction and socially assistive systems. She was a Partner Group Leader in the Haptic Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, where she completed her PhD in 2024. Her work focuses on designing empathetic robot systems—particularly tactile sensing and emotional behavior—for applications such as assistive robots for children with autism. Burns earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering from George Washington University. In 2025, she joined the University of Tennessee as an Assistant Professor, where she leads the Social Tactile & Assistive Robotics and Intelligence (STARI) Lab.
