Alexis E. Block is currently a guest scientist in the Haptic Intelligence department while she is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Biomechatronics Lab at the University of California with Veronica Santos. Alexis earned her doctorate degree from ETH Zurich in 2021. She received her bachelor's degree with honors in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and two minors in Mathematics and Engineering Entrepreneurship in 2016 from the University of Pennsylvania. The following year, 2017, she received her master's degree in Robotics, also from the University of Pennsylvania.

Alexis E. Block's doctoral research, HuggieBot, focused on social-physical human-robot interaction. She was a Center for Learning Systems (CLS) Doctoral Fellow. She started her research in July 2017 at MPI-IS in Germany. Block spent a year and a half in the Computer Science Department at ETH Zürich. Her two ETH co-advisors were Roger Gassert (Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory) and Otmar Hilliges (Advanced Interactive Technologies). In January 2020 she rejoined her primary doctoral advisor, Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, and the rest of the Haptic Intelligence Department. She successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on 12 August 2021.

Alexis Block was recently selected to receive the Max Planck Society's Otto Hahn Medal for her doctoral dissertation; she is the first student from MPI-IS to win this prize from the new research direction of intelligent systems. She will go to Berlin in June to attend the Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society to receive this honor. Alexis was also awarded a two-year postdoctoral computing innovation fellowship (NSF, CRA, and CCC funded) to support her research at UCLA. Block was named a 2020 Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering. She was selected as a 2018 HRI Pioneer, and elected and served as General Chair for HRI Pioneers 2019. She also co-founded the MPI Athena Group to support women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, robotics, intelligent systems and related fields.