Dr. Zhuangzhuang Dai is a Lecturer in Applied AI & Robotics at Aston University. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Bath with a Graduate School Scholarship. He completed a knowledge transfer project between Extronics Ltd. and the University of Manchester delivering a flagship personnel tracking device. He was a NIST Software Engineer in the Cyber-Physical Systems group at the University of Oxford, working on Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems for emergency responders and robots. At Aston, he is the module lead of Software Engineering at Postgraduate level and a certified instructor of NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute. He is an IET Charted Engineer (CEng) and a PRINCE 2 project manager. His areas of interest include sensor fusion, embedded systems, Human/Robot Interaction, Deep Learning, computer vision, propagation modeling, and urban data science.
Dr. Luis J. Manso is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Computer Science at the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences of Aston University (joined in August 2018). He obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Extremadura, in 2009, 2010, and 2013, respectively. He was a Research Assistant (February 2010 to July 2013) and Postdoctoral Researcher (July 2013 to July 2018) at the University of Extremadura. He is a member of the Autonomous Robotics and Perception Laboratory. His research interests include world models, geometric learning, active perception, and human-robot interaction.
Dr. Ulysses Bernardet is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Computer Science at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich and has a background in psychology, computer science, and neurobiology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology of Simon Fraser University. He is the main author of the large-scale neural systems simulator iqr, has developed models of insect cognition, and conceptualized and realized a number of complex, real-time interactive systems. His research is centered on the development of autonomous, anthropomorphic virtual humans and bridges the domains of psychology, computer science, robotics, and neuroscience.
Prof. Manolya Kavakli-Thorne is a Professor at the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University. She obtained her B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from the Istanbul Technical University, in 1987, 1990, and 1995, respectively. She has held a variety of academic positions, starting as a Senior Lecturer in Game Design at Charles Sturt University from July 2000 to September 2003. She then moved to Macquarie University as Associate Professor and Postgraduate Director for Master of IT from September 2003 to August 2018. In August 2018, she became Professor and Academic Director of the AIE Institute in Sydney, Australia, a position she held until February 2023. Currently, she holds an Honorary Professorship at Macquarie University, a position she has held since August 2020 and will continue to hold until August 2025. She is an interdisciplinary researcher primarily interested in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Machine Interaction (HMI), Virtual and Augmented Reality, Integrated System Design, and Game Engineering.
