Satomi Sugiyama (Ph.D. Rutgers University) is assistant professor of Communication and Media Studies at Franklin College Switzerland. She has been conducting research on the way young people perceive and use mobile communication technologies in various cultural contexts. Her publications include Interpersonal communication beyond geographical constraints: A case of college students who maintain geographically dispersed relationships. (Mobile Communication Research Annual Volume II: Bringing Us Together or Tearing Us Apart? edited by R. Ling & S. Campbell, Transaction, 2011); Decorated mobile phone and emotional attachment for Japanese youths (Electronic Emotion, the Mediation of Emotion via Information and Communication Technologies, edited by J. Vincent, & L. Fortunati, Peter Lang, 2009); Mobile phones as fashion statements: Evidence from student surveys in the US and Japan. New Media and Society, 8 (2), 367-383, co-authored with James E. Katz, 2006. She was awarded MacArthur and National Endowment for the Humanities predoctoral fellowships at Colgate University. She has recently received the international exploratory workshop grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation in order to initiate a collaborative work exploring the notion of social robots.