Partners

Fiona is Professor of Psychology at the School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin. The main goal of her research is to provide a better understanding of how information is shared across the senses and to elucidate the brain processes involved in the perception of objects, faces and places across the main human sensory systems. Her main research interests are in human sensory and perceptual processes. She has published over 80 papers and chapters in many of the leading journals and text books in Psychology and Neuroscience.  Her research programme in multisensory perception is funded by several national and international organisations.

Giulio is  Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Genoa and Senior Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology and. After graduating in Electronic Engineering (Bioengineering) at the University of Genova in 1976 he became assistant Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa until 1984 working on visual processing at the level of single neurons and in human adults and children. He has been Visiting Research Associate at the Department of Neurology of the Harvard Medical School in Boston where he developed diagnostic techniques based on brain electrical activity mapping. He founded the LIRA-Lab (Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics). He was appointed Director of Research at the Italian Institute of Technology for the Department of Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences.  His research activities are in the fields of Biological and Artificial Vision, Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience and Robotics with the objective of understanding the neural mechanisms of human sensory-motor coordination and cognitive development from a biological and an artificial perspective. A distinctive aspect of his research has been the multidisciplinarity of the approach expressed through national and international collaborations with neuroscientists, developmental psychologists.

Luigi Cuturi received his master's degree in Experimental Psychology from the University of Padua (Italy) in 2009. Afterwards, he started a Ph.D. in Munich (Germany) at the German Vertigo Center supervised by Dr. Paul MacNeilage. He focused his research on the investigation of visual and vestibular sensory contribution to self-motion perception. During this time, he also spent 3 months as visiting researcher in Prof. Barry Seemungal lab at the British Imperial College in London (England). In 2015, Luigi received his Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience from the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN) of the Ludwig Maxmilian University (LMU-Munich). Since January 2016 Luigi works as post-doc researcher in Dr. Monica Gori lab group (U-VIP, Unit for Visually Impaired People). His research interests mainly regard multisensory perception, perception of verticality, spatial navigation, orientation and mobility.

Sarah is a post-doctoral fellow working with Prof. Fiona Newell in the Multisensory Cognition lab in Trinity College Dublin. During her time as a graduate student in Bangor University Wales and University College Dublin, Sarah employed a number of methods, including classic psychophysics and neuroimaging, to investigate how we visually represent and perceptually integrate information from the human body. Sarah’s Ph.D. research considered how the visual system processes information from socially salient directional cues, namely - head orientation, body orientation, and hand pointing direction.  Her research interests include face and body representation, joint attention, perceptual development and multisensory integration.

Temitayo A. Olugbade is a researcher at University College London with interests in AI and cognitive processes and emotional states, particularly within the development of technology to assist, support, or augment human capabilities/experiences. Her PhD (in Affective Computing, at University College London) was funded by the Presidental Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and Development. In 2011, she was awarded a National Information Technology Development Fund for her MSc in Intelligent Systems (University of Sussex). She has been an IEEE Certified Biometrics Professional since 2010.

Dimitris is VBC’s founder and he is the Managing Director. He has more than 25 years of industrial experience and extensive participation in EU funded RTD projects. He holds a M.Sc. in Computer Integrated Manufacturing from Cranfield University, UK and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Roger Williams University, USA.

Leonidas is working as a project manager in VBC. He has more than 16 years of experience as a project manager and coordinator of national and EU funded projects. He is a Spatial Planning engineer and holds an MSc in Local Sustainable Development. He is a doctoral candidate in Environmental Operational Research.

Mireille has a 25 years experience as a Consultant, Administrator, Manager or Director. She is the CEO of Ignition Factory since 2012. She received a Bachelor of Management, Business Administration and Management General from University of Panthéon Assas, Paris II in 1992. Ignition Factory mission statement is to ignite passion for learning and our teams endeavour to do so through gamification, cognitive psychology and interactive multimedia.

Stephane received a Master's degree in Game Design from ISART DIGITAL Paris, an international institute of higher education specializing in Video Games, 3D Animation and VFX. He received a BTEC Higher National Diploma in Physics and Electronics in 1996 and a OCRSA Diploma in Sound Engineering From IMW Studio in London in 2000. As a Game Designer Stephane devises what a game consists of and how it plays. He plans and defines all the elements of a game: its setting; structure; rules; story flow; characters; the objects, props, vehicles, and devices available to the characters; interface design; and modes of play. Once the game is devised, Stephane communicates this to the rest of the development team who create the art assets and computer code that allow the game to be played.

Felix received a Master’s degree in Information Technology From EPITECH, an IT higher education institution in France. He works as a game developer at Ignition-Factory. He also followed a game design cursus in Keimyung University in South Korea. On the sid, Félix is working on an game: Ab Irato.”  www.abirato.net 

Amandine is working at Ignition Factory (Paris, France) as a learning designer. She has experience as school teacher in France. Her main aim is to use her creativity and her knowledge of pedagogy to design devices multimedia in Ignition Factory’s projects. She would like to optimise the appeal, effectiveness and efficiency of instruction learning experiences and to use methodologies design lesson or a unit of learning of course, to create e-learning or job aids.

Kamil Cetin received his M.Sc. Degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Dokuz Eylul University in Turkey in 2007. During his M.Sc. studies, he also worked as an Electronic Engineer in healthcare industry in Izmir for four years. Then, he worked EU funded FP7 projects (ASPIRE and ISISEMD) and pursued his career as a Research Assistant in the Electronic Systems Department at Aalborg University in Denmark for three years. In 2016, he received his Ph.D. Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Izmir Institute of Technology in Turkey. During his Ph.D. studies, he worked within a national project supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Since May 2017, he works as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Robotics Brain Cognitive and Science Department at the Italian Institute of Technology. His research interests include robot manipulators, telerobotic systems, nonlinear control methods, and cable-driven robots.

Nicolò received his master's degree in Psychology, curriculum in Neuroscience, from the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, under the supervision of Prof. Gabriel Baud-Bovy and Dr. Sergio Solinas (2017). He is enrolled in the Bioengineering and Robotics Ph.D at DIBRIS, University of Genova, and he's working in the Dynamic Touch and Interaction (DTI) group at the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Science Department (RBCS) of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). He's studying the haptic perception and the haptic rendering by using force feedback devices.

Erica Volta received her Master of Science in Cognitive Science and Decision-Making Processes from the University of Milan in Italy in 2016. Her thesis regarded  the development of an adaptive prototype for multisensory e-learning, focused on the usability for people with learning deficits, such as dyslexia, and foreign learners. She is currently a PhD student of Computer Science at Computer Science and Technology, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering Department (DIBRIS) of University of Genoa. Her research interests cover a range of topics related to computational cognitive science, particularly applied to multisensory and multimodal integration, multimodal rehabilitation system for children, multimodal technology for interactive environment, technology integration with performing arts (mainly music), music therapy for developmental disease and sensory integration deficits.

Carla is doctor in Psychology, Music Therapist and Counselor in helping relationships.

She has been working since 1997 at Chiossone in the Rehabilitation unit in developmental agew with visual impairment children and youth.

Her main interest is the communication,  intrapersonal and interpersonal, through different channels: verbal, sound and body with the purpose to facilitate people, at any age, to become aware about themselves and much more powerful, efficacy and master of one’s life.