Biographical note

Fotis Liarokapis is currently the Research Director of CYENS - Centre of Excellence, Nicosia, Cyprus and a visiting Professor at Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK. Dr. Liarokapis holds a BEng from the University of Sussex, an MSc from the University of Hull, and a DPhil from the University of Sussex. Before moving to Cyprus, he was an Associate Professor and the Director of the HCI Lab at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. Prior to this, he was employed as a Senior Lecturer by the department of Computing, Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry University. He was also a research fellow at the ‘Serious Games Institute’ (SGI), Coventry University. Previously, he worked as a research fellow at City University and before that as a research officer at the University of Sussex. He has contributed to more than 170 refereed publications in the broad areas of virtual and augmented reality, serious games, computer graphics and brain computer interfaces. Dr. Liarokapis organised multiple conferences and workshops and he was the co-founder of the International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games). He was the program-chair of IEEE CoG 2020 and IEEE CoG 2021 as well as the general chair of IMET 2022, the general co-chair of IMET 2023 and the publications chair of Mobile HCI 2023. He co-organized the 'Mixing Realities: Cross-reality Visualization, Interaction, and Collaboration' workshop at IEEE VR 2023 and he was the general co-chair of Eurographics 2024.

Maria Shehade is a Senior Research Associate at the Museum Lab of the CYENS Centre of Excellence and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Cyprus University of Technology. She obtained her PhD in Cultural Heritage Management from University College London. She also holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Management from University College London and a BA in History, Archaeology and History of Art from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has many years of proven experience in research on digital cultural heritage, cultural policy, cultural heritage management and cultural diplomacy and was involved as a Senior Researcher in several research projects in the UK, Greece and Cyprus, with special focus on digital applications for museums and heritage sites, developing long experience on European-funded research programs. She also has many years of teaching experience and has taught in several universities in Cyprus and the UK, including most recently, the University of Nicosia, Open University Cyprus and the Cyprus University of Technology. She has received several scholarships, awards and research grants for her research from the National Foundation of Scholarships of Greece, the UCL Graduate School and the Leventis Scholarship Foundation, which also funded her doctoral research, and the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation. She also serves as a member in several national evaluation committees and review panels as expert evaluator for research proposals in the fields of cultural heritage and heritage science, and organised several international conferences. She serves as a board member in several international conferences on the application of new technologies in the GLAM sector, including the Program Board of the HCI International Culture and Computing. She was also the general chair of IMET 2021 and IMET 2022. Her research interests lie in the areas of heritage management and cultural policy, with an emphasis on interactive and emerging technologies in museums and heritage sites, especially focusing on the visitor experience, and issues of presence, authenticity, immersion and engagement. Her research also focuses on multisensory experiences in museum environments and the visitors’ sense of presence, which was the subject of the latest book she edited, entitled Museums and Technologies of Presence, which was published in 2023.

Andreas Aristidou is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus and a Research Fellow at the CYENS Center of Excellence. 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 in China, IDC Herzliya in Israel, the University of Cyprus, and the Cyprus University of Technology. Currently, he is on the editorial boards of The Visual Computer and Heritage journals, and serves as a guest editor for the Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences and Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras (AACA) journals. He is a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Eurographics. Dr. Aristidou has received several awards, distinctions, and research grants from highly competitive organizations, including EU fellowships and grants, the Office of Naval Research Global, NVIDIA, and the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation. His research includes over 60 peer-reviewed publications and has made significant contributions to both academia and industry. Among other contributions, he is the leading author of the FABRIK algorithm, which has become the default solution in all major game engines like Unity, Blender, and the Unreal engine, while he has developed and maintained the largest globally-accessible dance motion capture database. His primary research interests lie in the broader field of computer graphics, extended reality, and vision. He specializes in character animation (analysis, classification, and synthesis) and motion capture, where he uses techniques like machine learning and generative AI models to create virtual humans. His work also extends to digital heritage, VR/AR/MR environments, and the application of Conformal Geometric Algebra in computer graphics

Yiorgos L. Chrysanthou is the General Director of the CYENS Centre of Excellence and a Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of Cyprus. Yiorgos received his PhD from Queen Mary College, University of London and worked for several years as a research fellow and a lecturer at University College London before coming to Cyprus in 2001. He has published over 90 papers in journals and international conferences on computer graphics and virtual reality and is a co-author of the book "Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments: From Realism to Real-Time", (Addison-Wesley 2001+ China Machine Press 2004). Yiorgos has served as the local or overall coordinator of over 25 research projects, including a Marie Curie Training Network (4 mil Euro) as well as a Widening Teaming grant – as scientific coordinator (15 mil Euro). Yiorgos has been the supervisor of 12 doctoral students, 8 of which have already successfully obtained their PhD, while the others are expected to complete soon. Yiorgos is currently on the Executive Committee of the European Association of Computer Graphics (Treasurer). His research interests lie in the general area of 3D Computer Graphics, including algorithms visibility processing, illumination, real-time AR and VR rendering and computer animation.