Heather Knight is a computer science professor at Oregon State University. Her research interests include human-robot interaction, non-verbal machine communications and non-anthropomorphic social robots. She directs the CHARISMA* Research Lab, whose goal is to operationalize methods from the performing arts to make more charismatic robots.

Off campus, she heads up robot theater company Marilyn Monrobot, which has an annual Robot Film Festival and features robot comedy performances by Ginger the Robot. Past honors include the 2011 Forbes List for 30 under 30 in Science, a TED Robot Comedy talk, and the VMA-winning "This too shall pass" OK GO Rube Goldberg Machine music video.

*Collaborative Humans and Robots: Interaction, Sociability, Machine Learning, and Art.