„Some Potential Technologies to Support Neurodivergent Students in Inclusive Higher Education: Learning, Wellbeing and Healthy Aging.„

Prof. David J. Brown
Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom

The number of students in higher education with a known disability continues to increase, with the most common type reported to be ‘specific learning difficulties’ – including dyslexia, dyspraxia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder AD(H)D (Hubble and Boulton, 2021). Recent reports have also identified a range of important developments in Educational Technology for use in Higher Education in the near-, mid- and longer-term future, and these include AI,  XR, IoT, digital twins, and the Metaverse. In this context I will discuss a range of our current projects utilising AI to predict emotional states related to learning and behaviour in neurodivergent students and those with Autism, VR as an exposure therapy for students with Glossophobia, and combining VR and EEG to understand the early signs of dementia in young adults with learning disabilities.

Curriculum Vitae

David J. Brown is Professor of Interactive Systems for Social Inclusion and Director of the Computing and Informatics Research Centre, NTU. He has acted as PI on two EU H2020 projects, and co-I on EPSRC and ESRC projects to co-design enabling technologies to support students with learning disabilities and autism. He is the Conference Chair for the International Conference of Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies (ICDVRAT), and Associate Editor for Frontiers – Virtual Reality and Medicine.

Andreas Aristidou

„Cutting-Edge Technologies in the World of Performing Arts„

Dr. Andreas Aristidou
University of Cyprus, Cyprus

Curriculum Vitae

 Andreas Aristidou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, member of the Graphics & Extended Reality Lab, and a Research Fellow at the CYENS Centre of Excellence with special interest in computer graphics and character animation. He completed his PhD as a Cambridge European Trust fellow at the University of Cambridge and holds an MSc in Mobile and Personal Communications from King’s College London, where he graduated with honors. Dr. Aristidou also obtained a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He previously worked as a research fellow at Shandong University (China), IDC Herzliya (Israel), and the University of Cyprus, and participated in a number of EU funded projects. He is currently on the editorial board of The Visual Computer (TVC) and Heritage journals, and is a guest editor for the Frontiers in Virtual Reality and Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras (AACA) journals. He is a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM, SM from 2020), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE, SM from 2019), and Eurographics. He has received numerous fellowships, distinctions, and research grants from highly competitive local, EU, and international agencies. His main research interests lie at the intersection of computer graphics, virtual reality, and vision. He specializes in character animation (analysis, classification, and synthesis) and employs various techniques, including motion capture, inverse kinematics, and machine learning for virtual humans (deep and reinforcement learning). He is also actively involved in research related to digital heritage (intangible cultural creations), VR/AR/XR environments, and applications of conformal geometric algebra in graphics. He collaborates with EU creative industries and AI companies to design innovative algorithms for generative motion synthesis and character retargeting.