Duygun Erol Barkana is a Professor at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey, and she is the director of the Robotics Research Laboratory. She is working on robot-assisted rehabilitation systems, social-assistive robots, human–robot interaction, and affective computing. She has been honored with a Career Award by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (2009), the Outstanding Young Scientists Awards by the Turkish Academy of Sciences (2018), and the Research Incentive Award by Middle East Technical University Professor Mustafa Parlar Research and Education Foundation (2019). She is part of several national and international projects including the project EMBOA Affective loop in Socially Assistive Robotics as an intervention tool for children with autism.