Prof. Dr. Oliver Müller is a Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Freiburg, and serves as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. His academic journey includes a doctorate from Humboldt University Berlin (2005) and a habilitation in Philosophy (2012). Müller leads research on Philosophical Anthropology, Philosophy of Technology, and Ethics, with a focus on human-machine interactions and Anthropocene ethics. He supervises doctoral and postdoctoral researchers across projects like livMatS and BrainLinks-BrainTools. Research interests span neuroethics, transhumanism, and socio-technological systems, emphasizing ethical frameworks for emerging technologies. Publications explore AI ethics, drone warfare, and phenomenological embodiment, reflecting interdisciplinary engagement with neuroscience and environmental philosophy. Honors include the MTZ Bioethics Award and Heisenberg Fellowship. Müller directs participatory discourse initiatives bridging art and science, fostering public engagement with technological ethics. His work advances critical dialogues on human enhancement and ecological responsibility in the digital age.
Gerd Bruder is an Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida , affiliated with the Department of Computer Science . He previously held positions as a Research Associate Professor at UCF's Institute for Simulation and Training (2016-2022), Post-Doc at University of Hamburg (2014-2016), and Post-Doc at University of Würzburg (2011-2014). Habilitation : Computer Science, University of Hamburg (2017) Ph.D. : Computer Science, University of Münster (2011) M.Sc. : Computer Science (minor in Mathematics), University of Münster (2009) Research Interests : Gerd Bruder's work focuses on Extended Reality (XR) systems, spanning Virtual Reality (VR) , Augmented Reality (AR) , and Mixed Reality (MR) . Key areas include human factors , digital twins , 3D user interfaces , and perceptual modeling , with applications in healthcare, military operations, architecture, and smart environments. Recent Publications highlight innovations in XR locomotion , trust calibration with autonomous agents, spatial cognition , and haptic-visual integration . His 2025 articles address task-switching efficiency in XR and collaborative mixed reality design. Scientific Awards : Best Paper at ACM VRST 2023 2021 TechConnect Innovation Award Best Demo at ACM SUI 2021 Multiple Best Paper Awards (2016-2023) Best Poster & Demo Awards (2015-2020) Patents include systems for medical simulation , smart environment interruption management , and adaptive AR interfaces . His work bridges academic research and practical applications across VR, AR, and MR domains.
Sarah Pink is a leading Professor at Monash University , holding a joint appointment across the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture and the Faculty of Information Technology . She serves as Director of the FUTURES Hub and Emerging Technologies Research Lab , focusing on human futures in digital and net zero transitions. PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Kent Honorary Doctorates from Malmö and Halmstad Universities Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Her research spans design anthropology, emerging technologies, automated decision making, and future mobilities . Recent work examines: AI ethics in clean energy Smart homes for seniors Automated mobility futures Selected 2025 article trends show focus on technological ethics, urban data systems, and human-machine interaction across 6 subfields including automated decision making and sensory design. Major awards: CIOB Award for Best International Paper (2016) Asia Pacific Eldercare Innovation Gold (2021) Good Design Awards (2023) As research director for Monash Grid Innovation Hub and Human-Centred Computing , she leads projects funded by Australian Research Council, EU, and national research councils across five countries. Her lab engages 20 active projects and 20+ industry partners globally.
Prof. Torsten Wolfgang Kuhlen serves as a Universitätsprofessor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Teaching and Research Area for Virtual Reality and Immersive Visualization within the Department of Computer Science. He is affiliated with Chair of Computer Science 12 (High Performance Computing), the Visual Computing Institute, and remains an integral part of the RWTH IT Center where his research group operates one of the world's largest Virtual Reality laboratories including the 30 sqm aixCAVE visualization chamber. The group maintains strong connections with Computational Science & Engineering Division, National High Performance Computing Center for Computational Engineering Science (NHR4CES), and VR in Science and Industry Network NRW e.V. Prof. Kuhlen's research spans virtual reality, immersive visualization, and multimodal 3D user interfaces with applications across simulation science, production technology, neuroscience, and medicine. His work combines basic research on advanced methods and algorithms with interdisciplinary collaborations involving RWTH Aachen institutes, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and industry partners. Recent publications demonstrate strong focus on audiovisual perception, immersive analytics, collaborative virtual environments, and practical VR applications in education and manufacturing. His research group has produced significant work on listening effort in virtual environments, immersive authoring techniques, and VR applications for scientific visualization. Notable projects include VRScenarioBuilder for automated vehicle testing and applications in monitoring additive manufacturing processes. The group actively participates in major conferences including IEEE VIS and EuroVis, with several award-winning contributions. Prof. Kuhlen has advised PhD students including Martin Bellgardt who recently completed his doctoral degree on "Increasing Immersion in Machine Learning Pipelines for Mechanical Engineering". The research group maintains state-of-the-art VR infrastructure including the aixCAVE facility which is open to all RWTH research groups.
Eduardo Velloso is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sydney , focusing on interaction design for emerging technologies . His work explores novel user experiences through input modalities, interaction devices, and AI/ML integration in systems. Education: PhD in Computer Science (Lancaster University, UK), Bachelor in Computer Engineering (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Research Interests: Interdisciplinary work combining Human-Computer Interaction , Augmented/Virtual Reality , Eye Tracking , Wearable Computing , and Machine Learning . Publication Trends: Recent work addresses methodology in HCI , AR/VR applications , AI integration , and sensor-based interaction . Scientific Awards: Best Paper Award at CHI Best Paper Award at UIST Best Paper Award at TOCHI Best Paper Award at TEI Supervision: Actively supervises PhD students and collaborates with companies/government on projects like VR training systems and AI mediation tools . Labs/Teams: Affiliated with institutions in Australia (University of Sydney) and Brazil (PUC-Rio), with global co-authors in projects involving mixed reality , wearables , and AI ethics .
Alexander Müller-Rakow is a Researcher and PhD Candidate at the Design Research Lab at Berlin University of the Arts. His work explores the interplay between embodied interfaces , digital sovereignty , and social design , focusing on bodily movements as a medium for musical and interactive technologies. Education: Industrial and Interaction Design (University of Applied Science Magdeburg, University of Bergen) Current Roles: Research Scientist (Design Research Lab), Lecturer (Hochschule für Kunste Bremen, others) His research spans haptic technology , textile-integrated sensors , and experimental interfaces , often intersecting with digital justice and material interactions . Early-career publications include collaborations on capacitive sensing and urban design interventions , reflecting his interdisciplinary approach. As part of the Design Research Lab, he contributes to projects addressing inclusive digital futures , smart urban mobility , and collaborative tools , aligning with the lab's mission for ecologically sustainable design .
Andrea Stevenson Won is a researcher at Cornell University in the Department of Communication , focusing on virtual reality (VR), human-computer interaction, and social dynamics in immersive environments. Her work explores avatar embodiment , nonverbal behavior , and accessibility in VR for users with disabilities. Research Themes : Virtual embodiment and its psychological effects Accessibility solutions for blind and low-vision users in social VR Nonverbal communication analysis in immersive environments Pro-social behavior through VR interventions Collaborative VR systems and AI integration Recent Article Trends : 2024: Investigated avatar behavior transformation in mixed reality ( MRTransformer ), AI-guided accessibility tools, and nonverbal cue adaptations 2023-2022: Focused on educational VR applications, 360° video narratives, and longitudinal team dynamics 2021-2014: Pioneered avatar embodiment studies, anxiety detection via movement tracking, and homuncular flexibility in VR
Claudia Lang serves as Associate Professor for Anthropology and Health at both Leipzig University and Maastricht University, with her primary institutional base at Leipzig's Institute of Ethnology. Her academic journey includes a Heisenberg Fellowship at Leipzig University (2019-2024), multiple visiting professorships, and extensive research positions focused on mental health anthropology. Lang's research centers on the interface between mental health and social life, with particular emphasis on India. Her work examines how mental health concepts are localized and transformed within different cultural contexts, especially regarding depression in Kerala. She explores the intersection of traditional medicine (particularly Ayurveda) with biomedical mental health practices, digital innovations in mental healthcare, and the emerging field of ecological grief in climate-changed environments. Her research methodology is primarily ethnographic, involving deep fieldwork with designers, users, and practitioners. Lang's publications reveal consistent themes across medical anthropology, global mental health, and digital health innovations. Her work shows increasing attention to how digital tools are reshaping mental healthcare practices in non-Western contexts, while simultaneously examining how environmental changes affect mental wellbeing through frameworks of ecological grief. This dual focus represents a significant contribution to expanding mental health discourse beyond anthropocentric frameworks. Heisenberg Fellowship (2019-2024) Author of 'Depression in Kerala. Ayurveda and mental health care in the 21st century' (Routledge, 2018) Co-author of 'Global Health for All: Knowledge, Politics, and Practices' (Rutgers, 2022) Co-author of 'The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia' (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) Lang actively supervises students and has developed courses on medical anthropology of South Asia, research methods, and anthropology of mental health. Her current research projects investigate digital mental health innovations in India and the experience of ecological grief in climate-changed environments, aiming to develop a concept of environmental mental health that moves beyond anthropocentric notions.
Stefan Riezler is a full professor of Statistical Natural Language Processing at Heidelberg University's Department of Computational Linguistics (since 2010), affiliated with the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. Prior to this, he worked in Silicon Valley at Xerox PARC and Google Research. He holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of Tübingen (1998) and conducted postdoctoral research at Brown University (1999). His research spans machine learning, NLP, and medical informatics, focusing on interactive statistical learning. He co-leads the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) and serves on the editorial boards of Computational Linguistics and Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics . Key research areas include neural machine translation, healthcare AI (e.g., sepsis prediction), data augmentation, and reproducibility in ML. He develops tools like JoeyNMT and explores ethical challenges in clinical machine learning. Notable recent work includes advancements in time series analysis, multimodal interfaces (e.g., NLMaps for OpenStreetMap), and ethical frameworks addressing validity in healthcare ML. His publications emphasize practical applications of NLP in healthcare, speech translation, and cross-lingual systems. Grants and collaborations include interdisciplinary projects on medical data science and training next-gen NLP researchers. He actively contributes to open-source toolkits and reproducible research practices.
Dr. Lucie Kruse is a researcher at the Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Virtual Reality (VR). Her work focuses on immersive user interfaces for cognitive and physical training, particularly for older adults and those with dementia. She has been an active member of the University of Hamburg's HCI group since 2018 and served on the Ethics Commission since 2023. Her research interests include: Virtual Reality Exergames Serious Games Assistive Technologies Accessibility in VR Mental Health Applications Her publications from 2021-2025 demonstrate expertise in designing VR systems for healthcare, analyzing age-related interaction patterns, and developing inclusive interfaces. She has received multiple awards including the 2024 Honorable Mention for Best Poster at ACM SUI and the 2023 Honorable Mention at ACM CHI. Scientific Awards: Honorable Mention for Best Poster Award at ACM SUI (2024) Runner-Up Prize at Metaverse for the Good (2024) Honorable Mention at ACM CHI'23 Interactive Demo (2023) Honorable Mention at ACM VRST (2021) She has supervised multiple theses on topics like AI agents for mental health, accessibility of chatbots for seniors, and VR exergame design. Her work spans collaborations with institutions like HITLab NZ and Western Sydney University's MARCS Institute.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Kopp is a faculty member at Bielefeld University's Faculty of Engineering and serves as Research Group Leader of the Cognitive Systems and Social Interaction Group . He also holds administrative roles as Vice Dean and Deputy CITEC Coordinator . His work focuses on Artificial Intelligence , Cognitive Systems , and Socio-Technical World research areas. Research Group Leader: Cognitive Systems and Social Interaction Group Vice Dean: Faculty of Engineering Deputy Coordinator: Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) Project Manager: TRR 318 "Constructing Explainability" subprojects His research explores human-agent interaction , multimodal conversational agents , and social AI through projects like 39-Inf-11 Human-Machine Interaction and 39-M-Inf-VKI Virtual Humans and Conversational Agents . Publications address topics including adaptive explanation generation , gesture synthesis , and social cognition in dynamic environments. Current research topics span cooperative AI , explainable decision-making , and sensorimotor grounding in artificial systems.
Prof. Dr. sc. techn. ETH Oliver Staadt is Full Professor of Computer Science and Chair of Visual Computing at the University of Rostock , Germany. Since 2023 he also serves as Director of the Institute for Visual and Analytic Computing within the Faculty of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering . Previously he was Dean (2016–2018) and Vice Dean (2010–2016) of the same faculty. Education Ph.D. in Computer Science, ETH Zürich (2001) M.Sc. in Computer Science, TU Darmstadt (1994) Research Interests Prof. Staadt’s research spans virtual and augmented reality , computer graphics , visualization , telepresence , immersive analytics , and human–computer interaction . A particular focus lies on real-time rendering and display technologies for large high-resolution display systems, depth-image enhancement for RGB-D sensors, and interaction techniques that leverage spatial cognition and eye-tracking. His work is frequently applied to collaborative settings and microgravity environments, including experiments aboard parabolic flights and the International Space Station. Recent Publication Trends Between 2019 and 2021 his output centers on foveated rendering , AR viewpoint guidance , collaborative analytics on wall-sized displays , and embodied interaction metaphors . Earlier work addressed bandwidth-efficient telepresence, depth-image filtering, and physically-based animation. The corpus reveals a steady evolution from fundamental graphics algorithms toward applied immersive systems. Scientific Awards & Honors Fellow of the Eurographics Association Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (past) Associate Editor, Computers & Graphics (past) Associate Editor, Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds (past) Associate Editor, Frontiers in Virtual Reality (current) Chair, Expert Group on Virtual & Augmented Reality, German Informatics Society (2013–2020) Advising & Funding He has successfully supervised more than ten PhD graduates whose dissertations range from collision detection and physically-based animation to 3D interaction in microgravity and predictive user modeling. Current PhD researchers include Bipul Mohanto, Mana Takhsha, and Sven Kluge. His projects are supported by national and EU programs such as EVOCATION, SMOOTH, ARGuide, 3DPick, DIVA, and Telepresence. Labs & Teams Prof. Staadt leads the Visual Computing Group at Rostock, operating state-of-the-art facilities including large tiled display walls, VR/AR laboratories, and motion-capture systems. The institute hosts interdisciplinary collaborations with partners in visualization, computer vision, psychology, and aerospace engineering.
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Rasha Abdel Rahman is a leading figure in Neurocognitive Psychology at the Institute of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin . Her research bridges the domains of language production , visual perception , and semantic memory organization , with particular emphasis on electrophysiological mechanisms (EEG) and emotional influences on cognitive processing. Habilitation in Psychology (2008), Ph.D. in Psychology (summa cum laude, 2001), and M.S. in Psychology (1997) from Humboldt-Universität Since 2010: Heisenberg Professor of Neurocognitive Psychology 2009: Heisenberg Fellow Her research interests focus on: Language production mechanisms Interface between vision, semantics, and language Functional organization of semantic memory Attentional and emotional modulation of perception Face and object perception dynamics Mental imagery processes The laboratory employs behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG) methods to investigate how knowledge shapes perception and language processing. Recent studies examine: Emotional content's impact on social judgment AI-generated face perception Art perception influenced by artist morality Trustworthiness effects in visual consciousness Selected scientific awards include: Heisenberg-Fellowship (DFG, 2008) Heinz Heckhausen Junior Scientist Award (DGPs, 2002)
Prof. Elisabeth André is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Augsburg University , leading the Chair for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She holds academic roles including Managing Director of the Institute of Computer Science (2004–2006) and serves on numerous national/international committees such as the Bavarian Artificial Intelligence Council and DFG panels. Her research focuses on multimodal interfaces , affective computing , and social robotics , with emphasis on human-centered design principles and ethical AI. Education: 1988: Diploma in Computer Science (Saarland University) 1995: Dr. rer. Nat. (Saarland University) Research Interests: Multimodal analysis (physiological/gaze/speech/gesture), tangible interfaces, technology-enhanced learning, and AI ethics. She has pioneered projects like CALLAS (affective multimedia systems) and CUBE-G (cultural adaptation for agents). Awards: 2021: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (Germany’s highest research honor) 2013: ECCAI Fellow 2010: Member of Leopoldina and Academia Europaea Grants & Leadership: Led EU projects (e.g., METABO, E-Circus), DFG initiatives, and co-chaired major conferences (ICMI, AAMAS). Supervised over 20+ PhD students and 11 ongoing doctoral candidates. Labs/Teams: Leads the Human-Centered AI team at Augsburg, collaborating on projects like FORSocialRobots and TherapAI. Active in interdisciplinary efforts for ethical AI frameworks and educational robotics.
Bruno Fruchard is a Researcher at Inria in the Loki team in Lille, France. He previously held a postdoctoral position at the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab at Saarland University, Germany, and completed his PhD in Computer Science focused on HCI at Télécom Paris (formerly Télécom ParisTech). His research centers on adaptable interaction techniques, novel interfaces, and haptic systems, with a focus on embodied interaction and wearable technologies. Key areas of interest include designing haptic feedback systems (e.g., TactJam, Weirding Haptics), exploring microgestures for wearables (e.g., MicroPress, SoloFinger), and applying user-centered design to sports analytics (e.g., lead climbing performance tools with the French Federation of Climbing). His projects span prototyping tools for on-body interfaces (BodyStylus, Polysense), evaluating recall-based interaction techniques, and critical design explorations like Eyecam, which examines sensing device ethics. Collaborative haptic design frameworks (CollabJam) and empirical studies on user memorization and interaction efficiency are also central to his work.
