Partners

Spiros Nikolopoulos is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at CERTH. His research interests include virtual reality, image analysis, multimodal analysis, multimedia analysis using semantic information and integration of context and content for multimedia interpretation.

Dimitrios Ververidis is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at CERTH. His research interests include virtual reality, authoring tools, and augmented reality.

Panagiotis Migkotizidis is currently a research associate at CERTH. His interests include Unreal, Unity, and VR experiences.

Maria Rousi is a research associate in CERTH. Her research interests focus on the areas of information retrieval and analysis on the web, and knowledge representation and discovery on the Semantic Web.

Sotirios Diplaris is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at CERTH. His research interests include bioinformatics, data mining and knowledge extraction techniques, knowledge representation, image processing and speech recognition technologies.

Georgios N. Yannakakis (yannakakis.net) is a Professor and Director of the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta, a co-founder of modl.ai, and an Associate Professor at TU Crete. He is a leading expert of the game artificial intelligence research field with core theoretical contributions in machine learning, evolutionary computation, affective computing and player modelling, computational creativity and procedural content generation. He has published more than 260 papers and his work has been cited broadly (over 10k citations; h-index 53). He has attracted over 6m Euro of funding from several EU and national research agencies to support the research activities of his group and his start-up. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Games and IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. He is the co-author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games Textbook (http://gameaibook.org/).

Antonios Liapis Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Digital Games (University of Malta). His research interests include AI as an autonomous creator or as a facilitator of human creativity, computationally intelligent tools for game design, as well as computational creators that blend semantics, visuals, sound, plot and level structure.

Helmut Kinzler Senior Associate Dipl Ing, Dipl Arch, BDA. Helmut joined Zaha Hadid Architects in 1998 as a designer and project architect. He has subsequently worked on a series of important architectural, design and exhibition projects. Among them, the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, USA, the Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany. Exhibition projects included the Deutsche Bank Art Collection’s 25 Year Anniversary exhibition in the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, Germany and ‘Tokyo Blossoms’, Tokyo, Japan. His current focus is the development and the realization of high-end residential projects for the practice.
Besides his work as project director, Helmut started the company’s VR department in 2015; researching and developing the technology for applications in the practice’s design and presentation workflow. ZHVR Group have now developed solutions for the practice’s emerging digital design workflow – including immersive design techniques and networked visualisation tools for internal design evaluation and external presentations.
One of the department’s main foci is the development of a comprehensive understanding of emerging cybernetic space and culture – and the emerging role of architectural design and style. The group engages with multiple partners and has contributed projects to several public exhibitions – showcasing the VR technology and the practice’s design work.

Risa Tadauchi is a Senior Designer and Virtual Reality Developer at Zaha Hadid Architects and she is part of Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Group. Risa holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and has experience in coordinating and leading VR projects using game engines.

Daria Zolotareva is Senior Architect and exhibition designer at Zaha Hadid Architects. Daria holds a Masters of Architecture from Yale University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Pennsylvania and has experience working across a wide range of scales, from Urban Redevelopment projects to architectural-scale work, to exhibitions and product design. She has been working with the ZHVR group to bring VR into the exhibition environment since 2016.

Fulbright Alumnus, MIT Technology Review Innovator under 35, MSc in Architectural Engineering, tech entrepreneur.
Currently leading Mindesk project to connect 3D design tools in real-time. Constantly seeking for virtual simple solutions to real complex problems.

Christoph Hoelscer is Professor of Cognitive Science at ETH Zurich since 2013; previously assistant and extra-​curricular professor at University of Freiburg, Germany, Center for Cognitive Science. Doctorate (2000) and Habilitation (2009) in Psychology at University of Freiburg. Project manager in IT industry from 2000-​2003 (User-​adaptive systems, usability). Research Interests: Wayfinding in Built Environments; Spatial Cognition & Usability Research for Architectural Design; Human Computer Interaction; User Modeling & Personalisation; Information Retrieval & Web Search Behavior.

Beatrix Emo is a practicing architect, and director of Spatialist Arch. Her research is on how individuals experience urban spaces and spans the fields of urban design, space syntax and spatial cognition. She is Senior Lecturer at ETH Zurich and a Digital Initiative Zurich fellow.

Michal M. Gath, Architect (B.Arch, M.Sc), Doctoral Researcher@ETH Zürich. Interests: Virtual reality experiments, Multi-agent systems, BIM, Parametric modeling, Generative design. Simulation: Unity3D, NetLogo, MassMotion. Architectural Modeling: Rhino, Grasshopper, Revit.

Ed Tibuzzi {Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering} is a designer and researcher based in London (UK). He is currently design director at AKTII. He graduated from the Civil Engineering Faculty or Rome2 University in 2005. Subsequently to his degree he developed a profound interest for parametric design. Uncertainty modeling, quantification and mitigation, multi-scale modeling of structures and multidisciplinary design optimization are part of his daily research.

Georgios Adamopoulos is a creative coder, architect & visual artist specializing in computational design and computer graphics. His work gravitates towards the fuzzy intersection of immersive technologies, game development and the architecture/engineering industry.

Jeg Dudley is a computational designer living in London (UK). He holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in Architecture, both from the University of Bath. He previously worked for Thomas Heatherwick Studio, RoboFold, Atmos, and other companies with a focus on complex geometry and computationally-derived design, optimisation & fabrication processes. For the last six years Jeg worked as a computational designer within the P.art team at AKT, creating ‘master’ parametric models for projects such as ‘Vessel’ (Heatherwick Studio, Hudson Yards NY), ‘Serpentine Pavilion 2016’ (BIG, London UK) and ‘The Tide’ (DS+R, London UK). He has run workshops and given lectures at academic institutions including The University of Westminster, The Royal College of Art and The Bartlett. Jeg is currently an Associate at AKT, and leads their in-house software development team. www.jeg.co

Peter Hale, Operations Director, Building Services, Sweco UK. Peter has over 18 years experience working in Building Services Consultancy, having worked on a variety of major projects undertaking responsibility or a full range of design and management aspects, leading teams through various stages from conceptual schemes to full detailed designs. Peter leads a multi-disciplinary design group working on projects including hotel, retail, commercial and education. Peter has also undertaken resident engineer roles on new build construction sites for several large commercial office developments.

Arun Selvaraj Executive Engineer – Building Services, Sweco UK. Accomplished, Electrical Engineering Professional with extensive experience in facilitating the overall design process from initial specifications to project completion. Utilized extensive engineering skills to design electrical services for all types of buildings on high-paced commissioning
projects.

Dinos Ipiotis, BIM Manager, Building Services, Sweco UK. Dinos has 20 years of experience in architectural visualizations, 3d modelling and architectural drawings. He joined Sweco in 2017 in the Building Services department and started as a MEP modeler. He was then promoted to BIM Manager and obtained ISO19650 accreditation from BRE. Dinos is involved in the development of real time visualisations and virtual reality presentations apart from his daily BIM Management role in complex large scale projects. He is currently studying for his MSc in BIM and Digital Built Environments in the University of Salford which will be accomplished in January 2023. As part of his role, Dinos is also researching new tools, workflows and technologies for the Buildings Division and liaises with the Digital Management Team to incorporate these solutions increasing the efficiency of the teams.

Kostas Kostalampros, Senior Engineer,  Building Services, Sweco, UK. Kostas has over 10 years’ experience In M&E engineering, designing and project managing projects across different sectors in the industry. Having experience both in Consulting and contractor environments, Kostas brings in the team the technical expertise and concise understanding of M&E design solutions, and integration with BIM technologies in multidisciplinary environments.